How to set up Multiple SSH account for Github

Step 1 – Create a New SSH Key

We need to generate a unique SSH key for our second GitHub account.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your-email-address"

Be careful that you don’t over-write your existing key for your personal account. Instead, when prompted, save the file as id_rsa_SECOND. In my case, I’ve saved the file to ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cristianfierro.

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Step 2 – Attach the New Key

Next, login to your second GitHub account, browse to “Account Overview,” and attach the new key, within the “SSH Public Keys” section. To retrieve the value of the key that you just created, return to the Terminal, and type: clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cristianfierro.pub. That copies public key, and then you have to paste this into the GitHub textarea. Feel free to give it any title you wish.
Next, because we saved our key with a unique name, we need to tell SSH about it. Within the Terminal, type: ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_SECOND. If successful, you’ll see a response of “Identity Added.”
If you are using Windows maybe you will get this error: “Could not open a connection to your authentication agent”


Solution:
In the CMD window, type the following command:
cd path-to-Git/bin (for example,cd C:\Program Files\Git\bin)
bash
exec ssh-agent bash
ssh-add path/to/.ssh/id_rsa_cristianfierro

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Step 3 – Create a Config File

We’ve done the bulk of the workload; but now we need a way to specify when we wish to push to our personal account, and when we should instead push to our company account. To do so, let’s create a config file.

touch ~/.ssh/config
vim config

If you’re not comfortable with Vim, feel free to open it within any editor of your choice. Paste in the following snippet.

#default account
Host github.com
HostName github.com
User git
PreferredAuthentications publickey
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

This is the default setup for pushing to our personal GitHub account. Notice that we’re able to attach an identity file to the host. Let’s add another one for the company account. Directly below the code above, add:

#cristianfierro account
Host cristianfierro.github.com
HostName github.com
User git
PreferredAuthentications publickey
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_cristianfierro

This time, rather than setting the host to github.com, we’ve named it as SECOND.github.com. The difference is that we’re now attaching the new identity file that we created previously: id_rsa_SECOND. Save the page and exit!

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Step 4 – Try it Out

It’s time to see if our efforts were successful.

When you want to clone a repository with the SECOND account, instead of using:

git clone git@github.com:second/secondsproject.git

You should use :

git clone git@second.github.com:second/secondsproject.git

In my case:

git clone git@cristianfierro.github.com:cristianfierro/project.git

Step 5 – Change User Information

After all you have to change the information of the second repo

cd my_other_repo
# Changes the working directory to the repository you need to switch info for
git config user.name "Different Name"
# Sets the user's name for this specific repository
git config user.email "differentemail@email.com"
# Sets the user's email for this specific repository