How to Configure Multiple SSH Keys with multiple Github Account

2 min readSep 4, 2020

Often you might have used Github SSH key for avoiding to enter username and password again and again. I too prefer the approach as it is less annoying and works like a magic. We will use terms personal for referring to our personal Github account and work to our organization account.

Prerequisites

Generating SSH Keys
Add SSH Key to your Github Account (separate for both account personal/work)
Creating SSH Agent Config to specify ssh keys for different host

Generating SSH Key

Open the terminal and execute below commands

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "yourpersonalemail@gmail.com"

It will ask you for the filenames keep it default
Again execute the same command with changed parameter

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "workemail@org.com"
// choose filename different eg id_rsa_work.pub for public key
// similarly for private key filename id_rsa_work

Add SSH Key to Github Account

Add the generated public keys to your personal/work Github Account in your account settings page. Refer https://docs.github.com/en/articles/adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-github-account.

Creating SSH Agent Config

As the ssh url will be different for both your personal/work account we need to make some tweaks inorder to apply proper SSH Key to each account.

#Default github# Save file at ~/.ssh/configAddKeysToAgent yesHost github.com
  Hostname github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Host organization.github.com
  Hostname github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work

So we have configured most of the settings but there is one more puzzle we need to solve. If you have configured github global.config.username it will be used as username for commit messages in your work repo too. We need to make some changes to our global git config file.

// filelocation: ~/.gitconfig
[user]
    name = kailashyogeshwar85
    email= kailashyogeshwar85@gmail.com
[includeIf "gitdir:~/project/work/"]
    path = ~/project/work/.gitconfig

As we can see we are referring different gitconfig file for our work repositories. Lets see the contents

// filelocation: ~/project/work/.gitconfig
[user]
    name = organization_username
    email= workemail@work.com

Cloning repository

Default url for org repository is:

git@github.com:org/repoName

change url to

git clone git@work.github.com:work/repoName

TADA! You have successfully configured two Git Accounts with two separate SSH Keys no more worries to enter password.