Configure Your SSH Keys for Git

To use Git with SSH for your project version control you MUST configure an SSH key in your profile. The SSH key is how the Projects identifies you.

The first section below shows how to add your SSH key to Projects. The following sections show you how to create a key, if you don't already have one.

Add your SSH key to Projects

Go to My projects (login required, of course).

Click on My projects settings.

Here you have all your preferences specific to Projects. Click on the SSH keys tab.

Enter a description of the key, your SSH key and press save. If there is any error you will see a message in red and the key will not be save. The key MUST be 2048 bytes and not more than 4096. Make sure you upload you public key.

Please allow a few minutes for our servers to sync, after that you will be able to clone your Git repository.

This is a screenshot of me cloning a test repository.

Create your SSH key

If you don't already have an SSH key you must create one. Depending on your operating system and client software the procedure might differ. Here we will explain how to create an SSH key with PuttyGen on Windows and with OpenSSH on linux.

Generating an SSH key with PuTTYgen

If you don't have it you may download PuTTYgen from ​PuTTY Download Page.

In order to generate an SSH key you need to start PuTTYgen. The application looks like this:

Click on generate to create your key. Follow the instructions you see. The key generation process looks like this:

Before saving you should decide if you want to use a passphrase or not. Not setting the passphrase is for the lazy ones, those of us that like to stay safe will set a proper passphrase. Now save the key you just generated.

!PuTTYgen generates key in its own format, so we must export it in OpenSSH format before we can use it with Projects. Click on "Conversions" and then "export OpenSSH key". Save it in a convenient path.

Open the OpenSSH key that you just saved in a text editor, copy ALL the text and paste it in your Projects' SSH key preferences page (see below).

Generating an SSH key with OpenSSH

You should have ​OpenSSH already installed.

If you already have your SSH key you may skip this chapter and go directly to the next one on how to copy your key in Projects.

In order to generate a new key, you need to simply run the following command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C "user@example.com"

Feel free to customise it to your needs and enter your correct e-mail address.
Remember that the key must be at least 2048 bytes and not more than 4096.

When you execute that command you will see something like this:

Projects' RSA fingerprint

33:f0:66:cc:65:6e:c6:a1:35:be:a3:a0:33:01:59:56.