I recommend setting up an SSH key to simplify authentication with GitHub and other services.
Make sure you’re in your home directory. You should be by default, but you can double-check with the “print working directory” command: pwd
pwd
You should be in /Users/yourusername. If not, you can switch to that directory with the cd command, passing in the directory you want to switch to.
cd ~
You can always use a tilde ~ as a shortcut for your home directory.
Check to see if you already have an .ssh key configured:
ls ~/.ssh/id_rsa
If it prints /Users/yourusername/.ssh/id_rsa, then you already have an SSH key and can skip to the next page: [[GitHub|06 GitHub]].
Type the following command to generate your SSH key, substituting the same email address you used for Git earlier:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "youremail@example.com"
It should prompt you for a file name. You can just hit ‘enter’ to accept the default.
It will then prompt you for a password. You can just hit ‘enter’ (twice) to not set a passphrase. That compromises your key should anyone gain access to your laptop, but it may be simpler for the sake of this course. It’s much safer to use a passphrase when generating a key when you truly want to maximize security.
If all is well, you should see that your identification and your public key have been saved to .ssh/id_rsa and .ssh/id_rsa.pub respectively.
Run the following command to add your new key to the SSH agent on your Mac:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
You’ll test your new key shortly, but first you’ll need to create a GitHub account and add your public key to the account.