Honestly, I am not a regular Githuber! But every now and then I have spike of activity and then I disappear (This is not my indent when I start a repo). I frequently face the ‘Permission Denied (publickey)’ when I start pushing some code into my new repos.
This means that, you do not have a SSH key on your local machine associated with your account. Either the key was removed or you haven’t made any. So, the solution is to create a new SSH key and associate it so that your machine is authorized to push code into the repo. Here’s how to fix it:
Step 1: Check if you have a SSH key
From your home folder, cd to .ssh folder (Usually C:\Users<UserName>.ssh on Windows). Check if you have two files named: id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. These files constitute your public and private keys used to identify yourself with a SSH server (In this case Github). Remember your keys must be named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in order to communicate with Github.
id_rsa.pub contains your public key that you will share with the Github server.
Step 2: Create new SSH keys if they don’t exists
If you don’t have the key, you need to create a new pair. A SSH key pair can be created using the ssh-keygen command. Here is an example:
ssh-keygen.exe -t rsa -C your-email-for-github@domain.comAnd here is how the output looks like:
This will create both id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files.
Step 3: Configure your public key on Github
Get your public key by opening id_rsa.pub in any text editor. Copy its contents and paste it into Github Settings > SSH and GPG Keys.
Now you have a SSH key configured on Github. This should solve your Permission Denied error and enable you to push code into your repo!
Bonus!
Here is how you can test your SSH key before you execute the push command. Issue the following command:
ssh -T git@github.comAnd here is how the output looks like if everything is fine:
Happy coding :)