Issue on adding SSH key to GitHub

git github ssh ssh-keys
Yu Xiong picture Yu Xiong · Feb 24, 2016 · Viewed 24.7k times · Source

I have got an issue that seems about the format of SSH key used by GitHub. I used Git Bash to generate a new SSH key:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]"

Then, I copied the key to the SSH section in settings of my GitHub account page. However, it came with the issue notice as follows:

Key is invalid. It must begin with 'ssh-ed25519', 'ssh-rsa', 'ssh-dss', 'ecdsa-sha2-nistp256', 'ecdsa-sha2-nistp384', or 'ecdsa-sha2-nistp521'. Check that you're copying the public half of the key

Following that, I edited my SSH key starting with ssh-rsa and my email address at the end. However, the issue is still there.

What is the solution to this?　

Answer

Kevin Burdett picture Kevin Burdett · Feb 24, 2016

ssh-keygen will generate you a pair of keys, one private and one public. It sounds like you uploaded the wrong one. GitHub wants the public key, typically here: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

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