Yathartha Joshi Open Source Enthusiast

Managing multiple github accounts in a single machine using SSH

22 Jan 2022

In this article I will be sharing how to manage multiple github accounts in a single maching using SSH.

I recently wanted to use my personal github for my own contributions, alongside contributing in my work github account, I knew I had setup SSH for my github-work, I did follow some steps to create a public/private key, but now when I want to push in my github-personal, I get error that meant I am trying to push in my github-personal using my github-work account (for simplicity I will be calling github used for work as github-work, and for personal as github-personal). Ideally I wanted that I am able to make a switch between the two without switching to a different system and with super ease.

There is one way that, the usual way I could have done, i.e using https, for this I had to generate Personal Access token, which github recently switched to from the previous method of using github username and password. This can be referred here.

Reason I chose not to go ahead with this method:

  • Overhead of saving this access token, thereby making it vulnerable of getting lost.
  • secondly, using ssh is a much secure way of authentication.

So, to setup I did follow the below steps:

  • Create a new secret key and store it in a seperate file, refer here
  • Add this to the Github Account refer here
  • Register the key with the ssh agent refer here
  • Edit .gitconfig, so as to tell git which key to use in particular scenario, something like this 
      [includeIf "gitdir:<directory to whitelist all personal repos>"]
      [user]
          name = <your name>
          email = <your github email>
      [core]
      sshCommand = "ssh -i <ssh key path of github-personal>"

  ...
  rest details of the other (work) account
  ...
  • Also make sure to set username and email local to this repository 
          git config user.name = <your name>
      git config user.email = <your github email>

Refernce Posts:

  • https://dev.to/arnellebalane/setting-up-multiple-github-accounts-the-nicer-way-1m5m
  • https://gist.github.com/jexchan/2351996

With these simple steps, we will be able to setup github-work/personal and switching between them securely and with ease. Hope it helped!!

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