Using a non-default key name (other than id_rsa)

Question

I have set the Github passwordless login as below.

ssh-keygen -t rsa  -P ''  
cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub  |xclip 

I pasted the public key into ssh and gpg keys on the Github site.

git init  
git config --global user.name "someone"  
git config --global user.email  "[email protected]"  
git config remote.origin.url git+ssh://[email protected]/someone/newstart.git  
ssh -T [email protected]  
git clone  git+ssh://[email protected]/someone/newstart.git   /tmp/newstart

The above works.

Now I want to use a different key name for Github instead of its default name id_rsa.

ssh-keygen -t rsa  -P ''  -f  .ssh/id_rsa.github
cat .ssh/id_rsa.github.pub  |xclip 

I pasted the new pub key into ssh and gpg keys on the Github site.

git init  
git config --global user.name "someone"  
git config --global user.email  "[email protected]"  
git config remote.origin.url git+ssh://[email protected]/someone/newstart.git  
ssh -T [email protected] 

The above does not work.

git clone  git+ssh://[email protected]/someone/newstart.git   /tmp/newstart

The above also does not work.

ssh -i .ssh/id_rsa.github -T [email protected]

The command above can connect to Github successfully, but I can't type the following command to clone the repository.

git clone  -i  .ssh/id_rsa.github  git+ssh://[email protected]/someone/newstart.git   /tmp/newstart

Can't I use a pub key with another name, such as id_rsa.github instead of the default name id_rsa?

Answer 1

You need to tell SSH to use this key for Github. Put this in ~/.ssh/config:

Host github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github
    User git