Setting up SSH keys

Updated 2,659 Days AgoPublic

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You have 2 possibilities for generating SSH keys:

• generate a key pair on your computer and upload the public key to c4science. prefered method
• generate a key pair on c4science and download the private key to your computer. C4science will not store your private key.

Generate an SSH key

If you are using Windows, you must first install a Shell, see below

1. Open a terminal
2. Copy the text below and press Enter

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

1. If you have no other SSH key, keep the default file path /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa
2. When prompted, enter a secure passphrase
3. Voila, your public and private key pair is located at /home/user/.ssh/

Upload your SSH key

• At the top right on your user icon, select Settings
• On the left menu, go to AUTHENTICATION → SSH Public Keys
• At the top right, click on SSH Key actions → Upload Public Key
• Give it a name and paste the content of the public key (the .pub file)
• You can find the public key by running this command

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

• Click Upload Public Key
• And you're done, you can start clone repositories using SSH

Generate a key pair on c4science

If you don't know how to generate a key on your computer, c4science can do it for you. If you already uploaded your key, you don't need this.

Click on SSH Key actions → Generate Keypair. Follow the dialog and download the private key to the correct directory (this depends on your Operating System, it usually is ~/.ssh). Rename the keys to id_rsa and id_rsa.pub or SSH won't recognize them (see below).

You will also need to change the permission of the key:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa

If you don't have the standard key name id_rsa, configure SSH to use your custom key. Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config file:

host c4science.ch
 HostName c4science.ch
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_phabricator.key
 User git

Using SSH from Windows

Git Bash (preferred)

• Download Git Bash for Windows, which allow to use standard Bash commands
• Launch Git Bash
• Create and upload the key like documented above with ssh-keygen.exe instead, display the content of the pubkey using cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub from git bash
• You can now clone your repository from git bash, git clone ssh://git@c4science.ch/[...]
• The key should be added to your SSH Agent, if not you can add your key temporarily using eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

TortoiseGIT / TortoiseSVN

• Download one or the other depending on your case,
  • TortoiseGIT
  • TortoiseSVN
• After the install, run PuTTYgen
• Click Generate
• Add a passphrase to your key
• Click Save public key, this is what you'll upload to c4science on your account
• Upload the public key on your profile as documented above
• You can now clone/checkout your first repository from any explorer window by right clicking