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 Bash.

  2. Enter the following:

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

    You may see a warning like this:

    The authenticity of host 'hostname (IP ADDRESS)' 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)?

    or like this:

    The authenticity of host 'hostname (IP ADDRESS)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:nThbg6kXUpJWGl7E1IGOCspRomTxdCARLviKw6E5SY8.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

  3. Verify that the fingerprint in the message you see matches one of the messages in step 2, 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".

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