Github permission denied: ssh add agent has no identities

Question

Full details in this answer.

In summary, when ssh-add -l returns “The agent has no identities”, it means that keys used by ssh (stored in files such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa, etc.) are either missing, they are not known to ssh-agent, which is the authentication agent, or that their permissions are set incorrectly (for example, world writable).

If your keys are missing or if you have not generated any, use ssh-keygen -t rsa, then ssh-add to add them.

If keys exist but are not known to ssh-agent (like if they are in a non-standard folder), use ssh-add /path/to/my-non-standard-ssh-folder/id_rsa to add them.

See this answer if you are having trouble with ssh-add or ssh-agent.

try this:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

worked for me

THE 2019 ANSWER for macOS Sierra & High Sierra & Catalina:

PS: most of the other answers will have you to create a new ssh key ... but you don't need to do that :)

As described in detail on https://openradar.appspot.com/27348363, macOS/OS X till Yosemite used to remember SSH keys added by command ssh-add -K <key>

So here are the 4 steps i had to take in order for it to work:

1: ssh-add ~/.ssh/PATH_TO_YOUR_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY (e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa)

2: Add the following in ~/.ssh/config

Host * 
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile PATH_TO_YOUR_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY (e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa)

3: make sure to remove any gitconfig entry that use osxkeychain helper:

 https://github.com/gregory/dotfiles/commit/e38000527fb1a82b577f2dcf685aeefd3b78a609#diff-6cb0f77b38346e0fed47293bdc6430c6L48

4: restart your terminal for it to take effect.

I have been stucked a while on the same problem, which I eventually resolved.

My problem: I could not execute any push. I could check & see my remote (using git remote -v), but when I executed git push origin master, it returned : Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. and so.

How I solved it :

• I generated a key using ssh-keygen -t rsa. Entering a name for the key file (when asked) was useless.
• I could then add the key (to git): ssh-add /Users/federico/.ssh/id_rsa , which successfully returned Identity added: /Users/myname/.ssh/id_rsa (/Users/myname/.ssh/id_rsa)
• I added the SSH key to github using this help page.
• Having tried all the commands in Github's 'Permission denied publickey' help page, only the ssh-add -l command worked / seemed useful (after having ran the previous steps), it successfully returned my key. The last step shows you where to check your public key on your GitHub page. And this command will help you check all your keys : ls -al ~/.ssh.

Then the push command eventually worked !

I hope this will help ! Best luck to all.

Run the following commands:

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-add /Users/*yourUserNameHere*/.ssh/id_rsa** 
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub**

Go to your Github account : https://github.com/settings/profile

1) Click : SSH and GPG keys

2) New SSH Key and Past it there

3) Add SSH Key

Done!