I recommend setting up an SSH key to simplify authentication with GitHub and other services.
In Babun, make sure you’re in your home directory. You will be by default, but you can double-check with the “print working directory” command: pwd
pwd
You should be in /home/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 for an .ssh directory:
ls .ssh
If you see an id_rsa.pub file, then you already have an SSH key and can skip to the next page.
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.
The new keys will not have been generated with the correct file permissions, so run these two commands:
chmod -R 700 .ssh/
chmod 600 .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.