Setup GitHub repository SSH deploy keys

deploy-keys.md

Setup GitHub repository SSH deploy keys

1. Create GitHub repository in github and save the SSH repository url

2. Init git on server in code directory

• git init

3. Create SSH keys on the server

• ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C [email protected]
• Rename the key that doesn't end with .pub to repo-name.deploy.pem
• Save .pub file content to your local client for use later
• Move .pem key to ~/.ssh/ or suitable location
• Change key file permission: sudo chmod 400 repo-name.deploy.pem

4. Create ssh-config file

• Navigate to ~/.ssh and touch config set permission sudo chmod 644 config
• Add entry in config file

Host gitreponame
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/repo-name.deploy.pem

5. Add the content from the public key file i.e. .pub to your github repository, settings > deploy keys > Add deploy keys

6. Set the remote git repository url on the server for the initalized git repo

• git remote add origin git@gitreponame:organization-name/repo-name.git or if already existing git remote set-url origin git@gitreponame:organization-name/repo-name.git
• test with: git remote -v

7. Add files to commit and push them to the master branch

• git add .
• git commit -m 'root commit'
• git push -u origin master

You've greatly demystified deploy keys for me. Thank you for this!

Configuration the key via .ssh/config as demonstrated here is nice.

I just learned about:

git config core.sshCommand 'ssh -i private_key_file'

via StackOverflow, which is even better, for my purposes, so wanted to mention it here.