Accessing GIT (Part 2) - SSH

The alternative to connecting to your remote repository via HTTPS is, of course, SSH. This involves generating a key pair. Encryption is done locally via a private key and you provide the public key to your GIT provider for decryption. This involves a little more setup than for HTTPS but is ultimately a more secure method.

As with part 1, this post could be much shorter to just get you up and running with SSH in no time, but I went through the pain of getting to grips with all of this myself wishing there was a single place I could have got all of this information from. This is for folks who would like to understand a little more than just follow a step by step without really knowing why or what.

Creating the keys:

Find and follow the instructions for your chosen GIT repository. It will most likely involve generating your key-pair via the GIT Bash terminal using the command line ssh-keygen, which will generate the certificate files, and then pasting in the text from the new public key to your account. That's pretty much all there is to it.

For extra security, it's worth putting in a passphrase. This means that if anyone was able to get a hold of your machine or private key, they would still need a memorised key to use it. Some sites allow you to use 2FA in addition as well. You can avoid using a passphrase by just leaving it blank. This makes things simple, but for obvious reasons is not recommended.

Set your target:

In the first part on HTTPS, we cloned a repo using the HTTPS URL. We could do the same here but by selecting the SSH option from the drop-down. It should look something like:

    git@github.com:UserName/Myrepo.git

compare this to the HTTPS URL of:

    https://github.com/Username/Myrepo.git

Or if you'd rather change one of your repo's that is currently set to HTTPS to SSH, you can do this too. Just run:

    git remote set-url origin git@github.com:UserName/Myrepo.git

To check, you can list your configured remote URLs with:

    git remote -v

Just be aware; If you connect for the very first time using a more GUI based software like VSCode, you may just get an error as it won't give you this message. Best do the first connect in GIT Bash.

Try it out:

Start with a git pull. The first time you connect it will ask you if you are sure you want to connect to the server and give you the fingerprint for that server. You can check your provider's documentation to confirm you're connecting to the right fingerprint.

At the time of writing this, you can find the RSA fingerprints for BitBucket and GitHub here:

BB: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/troubleshoot-ssh-issues-271943403.html?_ga=2.97089951.1499627191.1523138139-1040706359.1522752215

GH: https://help.github.com/articles/github-s-ssh-key-fingerprints/

If you avoided using a passphrase when setting up your key-pair, then that's it. You never have to worry about connecting again. But if you (and you should) use a passphrase for more security, it gets annoying as you're asked for that key-phrase every single time you interact with the remote repo. That's where ssh-agent comes in.

SSH-AGENT:

SSH-Agent allows in-memory storage of a key. This runs within the session that kicked it off. You can manually start the agent in your session and add your key to it as follows:

    #Start the agent:
    eval $(ssh-agent -s)

    #Add your key:
    ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

You'll be asked for your passphrase when adding the key, but after that and for the duration of your session, you will no longer be asked for it.

Exit the terminal and you'll have to do it again. Yeah, it's not great to have to do this manually every time. Fortunately, like with PowerShell profiles, you have the ability to run set of commands automatically on each session start-up. Namely the .bashrc file which you should be able to find in your user folder.

You could just copy the above into the .bashrc file but GitHub gives us a much cleaner snippet to use.

The below snippet is taken from https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-ssh-key-passphrases. Just paste it into your .bashrc file.

env=~/.ssh/agent.env

agent_load_env () { test -f "$env" && . "$env" >| /dev/null ; }

agent_start () {
    (umask 077; ssh-agent >| "$env")
    . "$env" >| /dev/null ; }

agent_load_env

# agent_run_state: 0=agent running w/ key; 1=agent w/o key; 2= agent not running
agent_run_state=$(ssh-add -l >| /dev/null 2>&1; echo $?)

if [ ! "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] || [ $agent_run_state = 2 ]; then
    agent_start
    ssh-add
elif [ "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] && [ $agent_run_state = 1 ]; then
    ssh-add
fi

unset env

If the file doesn't exist, you'll have to create it, which is difficult in Windows as it doesn't like having files with an extension but no name. To create it run:

    echo "" > .bashrc

Once you save that and exit, you'll be prompted once for your passphrase whenever you start a GitBash session, and then no more for the duration of that session.

VS Code

"Brilliant!" I hear you say! Not quite perfect yet though. Try doing a push or pull via VS Code now and you'll be greeted with an error message:

Example errors from two popular repos. Permission denied (publickey) for BitBucket and Host key verification failed for GitHub. Bummer.

Remember SSH-Agent runs under the agent that started it. VS Code isn't running one. The simplest way right now to get around this is to simply start VS Code from a GitBash session that is running the agent. Simply execute "code" in GitBash to start VS Code and try a push or pull again. Bingo.

So great. That should set you up nicely, though I'm not entirely happy with the workaround for VS Code. But maybe I'll address that in part 3. :)

Part 1: HTTPS
Part 3: SSH Config with multiple GIT accounts

Accessing GIT (Part 1) - HTTPS

So you've decided to help out on an open source project and clone a repository, or maybe start your own GIT repository somewhere like GitHub or BitBucket. Whatever the reason you'll need to decide on how to interact with your remote repository. HTTPS or SSH.

Let's play with both options. I'm assuming you have an account with your provider of choice. We'll use GitHub as an example but it won't matter if you have one of the alternatives. Just replace any mentions of GitHub with the name of your provider. I will also assume you have an existing repo as well. Gitbash will be our tool of choice.

HTTPS:

• No setup required and no special ports required. 
• Authentication is done via a username and password. 
• You can also add 2 factor (2 step) authentication for extra security. 
• Your login is the same as the one for logging into your account. So you use the same credentials for pushing, pulling, etc as well as logging into your account and changing account settings. Beware if your login is compromised.

I would suggest using 2-factor authentication and enforcing it at the account level so that all users have to use it. There will just be an additional authentication step, such as using an App on your phone to generate a code.

Get the clone URL for your repo from GitHub. Make sure you choose HTTPS. It should look something like this:

https://github.com/Username/Myrepo.git

Now clone it.

git clone https://github.com/Username/SandBox.git

If it's a public repo it'll clone. If not you should be prompted for a login. It's probably a public one, so let's do a push. Just add a file, commit it and do a git push. You should get a prompt like this:

2FA:

Of course, if someone were to learn your password the could wreak havoc in your code. Hopefully, you've configured 2 Factor (or 2 step) authentication. There is more than one way to do this so best refer to your provider of choice. Such as an app called Authy which generates access codes. If you have this set up there will be an additional prompt after submitting your credentials.

Credential Manager:

For every action you take against your remote repo, you need to submit your credentials all over again, which is a real ball ache, especially when you have 2FA enabled. Or at least it would be if you didn't have the help of Credential Manager. Remember when you installed GIT you should have seen something like this:

By default, "Enable Git Credential Manager" should be ticked. If it's not enabled, you can enable this later with the following line in Git Bash:

    git config --system credential.helper manager

Note: you may need to run as Admin to change any system config.

You'll also notice a difference in your login experience with it enabled vs disabled. Especially if you have 2FA where you might get an error if credential.helper is disabled.

If you want to play around and see how it looks, you can disable the credential.helper by unsetting it as follows:

    git config --system --unset credential.helper manager

Of course, if you have this set at local or global level as well as system, you'll need to do the same there.

You can also check out the Windows Credential Manager while you do this. Just search for an open "Credential Manager"

You can delete stored credentials from there while you experiment if you like, to force a credential prompt.

Once you've set it up, you should be good to go with VS Code as well. The same settings will apply there. But there is another method to connect. We'll cover SSH in part 2.

Part 2: SSH
Part 3: SSH Config with multiple GIT accounts