You can use SSH keys to establish a secure connection between your computer and Stash for when you are performing Git operations.

There are a few steps to set up SSH keys for Stash, but it's quite straightforward, so follow along.

If you already have a key you want to use, go to step 4.

  • Your Stash administrator must have already enabled SSH access to Git repositories.

  • Supported key types are DSA and RSA2. RSA1 is not supported.
    At the time of writing, on Mac OS X, the Git tar archive can fail on special characters when using SSH to secure connections between your computer and Stash. (The Git archive command allows you to download as a single file the files in a checkout of the Git repository.)
    We recommend that you use the zip format; you can set that using the following command:

    git archive --format zip

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1. Check for existing SSH keys

 You should check for existing SSH keys on your local computer. If you already have a key pair that you want to use, you can go to step 4.

 Open a terminal and run the following:

cd ~/.ssh

2. Back up old SSH keys

If you have existing SSH keys, but you don't want to use them when connecting to Stash, you should back those up.

Do this in a terminal on your local computer, by running:

mkdir key_backup
cp id_rsa* key_backup

Now generate a new SSH key.

3. Generate a new key

If you don't have an existing SSH key to use, you need to generate one.

  1. Open a terminal on your local computer and enter the following:

    ssh-keygen

    You'll see a response similar to this:



  2. Just press <Enter> to accept the default location and file name. If the .ssh directory doesn't exist, the system creates one for you.

  3. Enter, and re-enter, a passphrase when prompted.
    The whole interaction will look similar to this:


     
  4. You're done! Now add the new key to Stash.

4. Add a key to Stash

  1.  In your terminal, copy the public key file to your clipboard by entering:

    pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
    sudo apt-get install xclip
xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

    Note that on Linux, you may need to download and install xclip, as shown in the code snippet above.

  2. In Stash, go to your profile:


  3. Click on SSH Keys and then Add Key:


  4. Paste the key into the text box:


  5. Click Add Key. You're done!