dotfiles/notes/shell/git_ssh.md

Table of Contents

1. Git + SSH = 🚀
2. Generating ssh keys for git remotes
3. User keys
4. Deployment keys
5. Managing multiple remotes
6. Further reading

Git + SSH = 🚀

Most git remotes, codeberg and github for example, encourage the use of SSH keys. These are extra-secure ways to manage your project. There are generally three types of keys

1. Account keys: Have the same read/write access as your account
2. Deployment: An ssh key attached to a single repository providing read access
3. Deployment (write): Same as above with write privileges. Not the default

Generating ssh keys for git remotes

In general, it's recommended to have a unique ssh key for every device, for every remote. That means if I access codeberg and github on 2 computers, I should have 4 keys in total

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/codeberg_key
# Hit enter twice to make it password-less

This will create a pair of keys, one private and one public. They'll be named almost the same way. Feel free to upload and share the .pub version. Don't ever compromise the private key, which is the one without the .pub

~/.ssh/codeberg_key
~/.ssh/codeberg_key.pub

You can test your keys at any time with the -T flag. The -i option here should be unnecessary once a proper ~/.ssh/config is setup

ssh -i ~/.ssh/codeberg_key -T git@codeberg.org

User keys

User keys are used globally, so we'll configure them in ~/.ssh/config. We do this by aliasing against the hostname, which means ssh will expand the standard call to codeberg.org with your alias!

Host codeberg.org
    Hostname codeberg.org
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/codeberg_waybook_main

Host github.com
    Hostname github.com
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_waybook_main

In other words, when we do ssh git@codeberg.org, ssh will immediately expand that alias into ssh git@codeberg.org -p 22 -f ~/.ssh/codeberg_waybook_main. To us it simply works without any further setup per-repository

Deployment keys

These keys are attached to a repository. For read keys, you can share one between multiple people. For write keys, take the same precautions as user keys

Once you've generated your key, run the following in your repository:

git config core.sshCommand "ssh -i ~/.ssh/codeberg_project1_key -F /dev/null"

This'll add an entry to .git/config to override the ssh command on that specific repository. That last -F tells us to ignore the global ~/.ssh/config, since it might have conflicting settings

Managing multiple remotes

Using multiple remotes is no harder than one... unless you use them in conjunction with deployment keys. It's far easier to use the same deployment key across multiple remotes of the same repository

You can list your remotes and add new ones

git remote -v
git remote add ice 'ssh://git@codeberg.org:22/akemi/dotfiles.git'
git remote set-url ice 'ssh://git@codeberg.org:22/akemi/dotfiles.git'
git remote rename berg ice

Now when using push, fetch, pull and other remote-dependent commands, add the remote name followed by the branch. For example, to interact with the noway branch on a remote aliased as ice we use

git push ice noway
git fetch ice noway
git pull ice noway

Further reading

Codeberg provides the easiest introduction. Note the use of ed25519, don't use RSA

Github has an article on deployment keys. Again, don't use RSA

Stack Overflow details how to configure deployment keys per-repository