Something like this should work (suggested by orip):
ssh-agent bash -c 'ssh-add /somewhere/yourkey; git clone git@github.com:user/project.git'
if you prefer subshells, you could try the following (though it is more fragile):
ssh-agent $(ssh-add /somewhere/yourkey; git clone git@github.com:user/project.git)
Git will invoke SSH which will find its agent by environment variable; this will, in turn, have the key loaded.
Alternatively, setting HOME
may also do the trick, provided you are willing to setup a directory that contains only a .ssh
directory as HOME
; this may either contain an identity.pub, or a config file setting IdentityFile.
None of these solutions worked for me.
Instead, I elaborate on @Martin v. Löwis 's mention of setting a config
file for SSH.
SSH will look for the user's ~/.ssh/config
file. I have mine setup as:
Host gitserv
Hostname remote.server.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.github
IdentitiesOnly yes # see NOTES below
And I add a remote git repository:
git remote add origin git@gitserv:myrepo.git
And then git commands work normally for me.
git push -v origin master
NOTES
- The
IdentitiesOnly yes
is required to prevent the SSH default behavior of sending the identity file matching the default filename for each protocol. If you have a file named~/.ssh/id_rsa
that will get tried BEFORE your~/.ssh/id_rsa.github
without this option.
References