Troubleshooting SSH

Recovering your SSH key passphrase

If you've lost your SSH key passphrase, depending on the operating system you use, you may either recover it or you may need to generate a new SSH key passphrase.

"Error: Permission denied (publickey)"

A "Permission denied" error means that the server rejected your connection. There could be several reasons why, and the most common examples are explained below.

"Error: Bad file number"

This error usually means you were unable to connect to the server. Often this is caused by firewalls and proxy servers.

"Error: Key already in use"

This error occurs when you try to add a key that's already been added to another account or repository.

"Error: Permission to user/repo denied to other-user"

This error means the key you are pushing with is attached to an account which does not have access to the repository.

"Error: Permission to user/repo denied to user/other-repo"

This error means the key you are pushing with is attached to another repository as a deploy key, and does not have access to the repository you are trying to push to.

"Error: Agent admitted failure to sign"

In rare circumstances, connecting to GitHub Enterprise via SSH on Linux produces the error "Agent admitted failure to sign using the key". Follow these steps to resolve the problem.

"Error: ssh-add: illegal option -- K"

This error means your version of ssh-add does not support macOS keychain integration, which allows you to store your passphrase in the keychain.

"Error: We're doing an SSH key audit"

This error means the SSH key you're using to perform a Git operation is unverified.