Generate SSH Key

Introduction

Learn how to generate a pair of SSH keys.

Check if there's any already available

Open the terminal and list the content in .ssh/ located in your home folder.

  ls ~/.ssh

Is there any *.pub file? The most popular and by order of preference:

Algorithm Public key Private key
ED25519 id_ed25519.pub id_ed25519
RSA id_rsa.pub id_rsa

If there's a file, copy the content from the *.pub to your Git host service. The other file is your private key, only share with computers you use.

Generate the key

If you don't have a pair of SSH keys, create a new one, by typing in your terminal:

  ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "<yourCommentHere>"

Or

  ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C "<yourCommentHere>"

You will be prompted to create a file to save the new key. Press enter to accept the default value.

After that there's a prompt to create a passphrase. You can simply hit enter to create the key without a password. If you ever want to update the password, you can do:

  ssh-keygen -p f /path/my_ssh_key

Copy the content of your public key

To use the key with your git online service, you'll need to copy the content of the name_of_key.pub. Use your favorite text editor or simply type in the terminal and copy.

  cat /path/my_ssh_key.pub

This is what you are going to use with your git online service.