Dear Git — A Quick guide to link Dev Ubuntu server with GitHub

I have done it literally countless time, but I always found myself googling how to create an ssh key on Ubuntu 20.XX depending on my server, however google returns a different article almost all the time which sucks because I know the steps I just want to avoid mistakes when typing. That push me to write this short tutorial using my saved commands over the years.

Create your SSH key — Assuming your on Ubuntu 20+

You can choose different algorithms for generating your ssh key, for simplicity I’ll go with RSA

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your@email.com"

your can name it whatever, I usually do

/home/<USERNAME>/id_rsa_<PROJECT_NAME> # make sure it's one word no space

Create config file

Create a config file in $nano /home/USERNAME/.ssh/config and put the following contents

Host project_name.github.com
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_PROJECT_NAME
   IdentitiesOnly yes

Copy the ssh public key and add to Deploy Keys on your GitHub repository under settings tab

Test your SSH key

ssh -T project_name.github.com If you set everything correctly you should get

Hi your-github-username/your-project-repository! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Clone your repository

Once you have linked your git, you can go ahead and clone your repository, if it’s already setup for git check tutorial on how to link GitHub repository and replace the URL with the below format, that’s beyond the scope of this tutorial

#format only ssh
git@project_name.github.com:your-git-username/your-project-repo.git
# Clone
git clone git@project_name.github.com:your-git-username/your-project-repo.git

Make sure to replace PROJECT_NAME, GIT_USERNAME and PROJECT_REPO

Thanks for reading.