First cool thing that everybody knows already: Mac OSX is based on Unix so you get ssh out of the box. Second cool thing you may not know: OS X 10.5 actually also comes with an ssh key agent (ssh-agent). That means that, without any additional softwar. How to add ssh key in mac os? Ask Question. Viewed 3k times 1. I have an ssh key name.ppk I want to add by mac terminal to be able to clone from Git repository because when I am cloning from the repository it give me. Permission denied (publickey). Fatal: Could not read from remote repository. You can generate SSH keys (for git) in. To communicate with the remote Git repository in your Beanstalk account from your Mac, you will need to generate an SSH key pair for that computer. This process requires only a few steps, and all of the tools necessary are included on your Mac. Launching Terminal. Terminal is an application that comes with macOS and provides you with an interface to run text commands.

Osx Terminal Generate Ssh Key Mac

This guide goes through setting up SSH keys on macOS Mojave 10.14 back to Mac OSX 10.11 and also a secure password-less SSH connection between a local macOS workstation and a remote server also running a Linux variant operating system.

The process requires generating a public and private key on the local computer and then adding the public key to the remote servers authorised list. What is great about this is that it allows a password prompt free session, handy for a lot of uses.

First thing that you need to do on your macOS machine is to create a directory that will store your SSH keys. Then you will generate a public and private key for your account, launch the Terminal and punch in some commands:

Create a .ssh Directory

Change to the home directory

Create a SSH directory name .ssh and move into it

Make sure that the file permissions are set to read/write/execute only for the user

Create your private and public key, the blank quotes at the end of the command gives the private key no password, so allowing for passwordless logins! /openssl-public-private-key-pair-generation.html.

Change into the .ssh directory and list the contents of that .ssh directory

Thats your SSH keys created, the private key is the id_rsa and the public one is the id_rsa.pub, don’t give out the private one always keep that one only on your local machine.

Sharing the Public Key

Create an authorized_keys in the .ssh directory of the remote computer that you want to connect to.

You can create automatic logins by adding the contents of your public key to the authorized_keys file on the remote device.

To see and copy your public key use the cat command and copy the contents:

Linux Ssh Keypair

On the remote computer if needed, change the permssions on the authorized_keys file to write to add the public key, on a new line paste in your public key, and change permissions back to read only after for security.

Allow write on authorised_keys

Mac Terminal Add Ssh Key

Paste the entire id_rsa.pub content with vi or nano into the authorized_keys file, if using nano use the -w flag to not use incorrect line breaks.

If the remote host does not have an “authorized_keys” file simply create one and after the public key is pasted in don’t forget to takeaway write permissions.

Going Both Ways

So now when you connect via SSH no password is prompted as the remote computer has your public key which is only decrypted by your private key held in your local .ssh/ directory. If you want the communications to be bilateral then repeat the process in the opposite order between the two.

Now the two computers can securely connect with no password prompting, making it ideal to script between the two for file copies or back ups.

Doing it Quicker

Now instead of typing in

Make an alias in your bash shell you could alias it to

Reload the the shell

Then all you have to type in is the alias

I wanted to use the key I generated using the PuTTYGen tool on my windows laptop, on my now repaired Mac Pro. The standard PuTTY generated key will not work on Linux or Mac OSX, so the key needs to be converted into a standard that will, like OpenSSH. You can convert your key by using the ‘Export to OpenSSH’ option explained in a previous post.

Generate Ssh Key Terminal Mac

Once you have your new private OpenSSH key, copy it to your Mac. /iphone-backup-extractor-registration-key-generator.html.

Open terminal, and go to your root… usually does this automatically, but type cd ~/ just in case.

Osx Terminal Generate Ssh Key Github

Create a .ssh directory if it does not already exist and copy the private key in here.

You may need to check that the key has the right permissions, type chmod -R g0-rx ~/.ssh

Enter your ssh command, ssh username@serverhostname.com and hit enter, you should get now have a SSH tunnel to your server.

HANDY TIP: use the vvv flag to debug the ssh command (looks odd but thats 3 v’s by the way!).

So type ssh username@serverhostname.com -vvv to receive a load of debug info that can be really useful in determining where you are screwing up.

Osx Terminal Create Ssh Key

Also I found this guide useful.