I have two different users at Github, one is my personal account and the other is the Uetke account. In my personal account I do sometimes play with repositories that nothing have to do with my work and therefore I like keeping things separated. However ssh keys can be used in one account at a time; fortunately the solution is easier than what I would have imaged.

First you setup your new ssh key as you probably did with the first one:

Bash

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]"

and remember to store it with a different name than the previous one. For example I will call each key as follows:

Bash

~/.ssh/id_rsa_github1
~/.ssh/id_rsa_github2

And add them

Bash

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_github1
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_github2
ssh-add -D
ssh-add -l

The last two lines are just for deleting the cached files and then to list the available keys. You can verify that the proper keys were correctly installed by ssh. The last step is to modify the configuration file of ssh to enable the selection of one or the other key:

Bash

cd ~/.ssh/
touch config

Open the newly created config file with whatever editor you like and add the following:

Bash

# Github 1 account
Host github.com-git1
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_github1

#Github 2 account
Host github.com-git2
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_github2

The only thing you have to do now is to clone the repository using either github.com-git1 or github.com-git2:

Bash

git clone [email protected]:User1/repo.git

You can also add it as a remote:

Bash

git remote add [email protected]:User2/repo.git

I use this to update repositories into the Uetke profile once they are ready for the public, but in the meantime I use my personal repository for myself or extremely curious people.

Header photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

The article Using two different ssh keys for Github repositories was written by Aquiles Carattino.

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Using two different ssh keys for Github repositories

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