After you've set up your SSH key and added it to your GitHub account, you can test your connection.

Before testing your SSH connection, you should have:

When you test your connection, you'll need to authenticate this action using your password, which is the SSH key passphrase you created earlier. For more information on working with SSH key passphrases, see "Working with SSH key passphrases".

  1. Open TerminalTerminalGit Bashthe command line and enter:

    ssh -T git@hostname
# Attempts to ssh to GitHub Enterprise

    You may see one of these warnings:

    The authenticity of host 'hostname (192.30.252.1)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 16:27:ac:a5:76:28:2d:36:63:1b:56:4d:eb:df:a6:48.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

    The authenticity of host 'hostname (192.30.252.1)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is nThbg6kXUpJWGl7E1IGOCspRomTxdCARLviKw6E5SY8.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

    Note: The example above lists the GitHub IP address as 192.30.252.1. When pinging GitHub, you may see a range of IP addresses.

  2. Verify that the fingerprint in the message you see matches the following message, then type yes:

    Hi username! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not
provide shell access.

    You may see this error message:

    ...
Agent admitted failure to sign using the key.
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).

    This is a known problem with certain Linux distributions. For more information, see "Error: Agent admitted failure to sign".

  3. Verify that the resulting message contains your username. If you see a message that contains "access denied," see "Error: Permission denied (publickey)".

    If you receive a message about "access denied," you can read these instructions for diagnosing the issue.

  4. If you're switching from HTTPS to SSH, you'll need to update your remote repository URLs.