git push: permission denied (public key)

Question

I'm trying to push a file to a git repo of a friend but errors on public key.

git push origin testbranch Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. 

Where and how do we define public / private keys?

git remote -v returns:

origin  [email protected]:Sesamzaad/NET.git (fetch) origin  [email protected]:Sesamzaad/NET.git (push) 

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I was facing same problem, here is what I did that worked for me.

Use ssh instead of http. Remove origin if its http.

git remote rm origin 

Add ssh url

git remote add origin [email protected]:<username>/<repo>.git 

Generate ssh key inside .ssh/ folder. It will ask for path and passphrase where you can just press enter and proceed.

cd ~/.ssh ssh-keygen 

Copy the key. You can view your key using. If you hadn't specified a different path then this is the default one.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 

Add this key to your github account. Next do

ssh -T [email protected] 

You will get a welcome message in your console.

cd into to your project folder. git push -u origin master now works!

Answer 2

I just had to deal with this issue. @user3445140's answer helped me, but was much more than I needed to do.

1. Get your public SSH key with cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
2. Copy the key, including the "ssh-rsa" but excluding your computer name at the end
3. Go to https://github.com/settings/ssh
4. Add your SSH key