“Key is invalid” message on GitHub

Question

I have generated SSH keys for a new server installation according to the procedure outlined here. However, when I copy the contents of id_rsa.pub to my keys list on

Answer 1

I know this is question is a cpl years old now, but if someone in 2018 encounter this:

then below is a no-brainer:

my problem was I tried to copy the private key

id_rsa

instead of public key content

id_rsa.pub

as my SSH gitlab repository key, so after you:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your@email.com" -b 4096

please remember about the .pub file extension to copy from:

• OSX:

  pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

• Linux:

  xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

• Windows PowerShell

  cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | clip

then paste it to your gitlab/github or other repository as your SSH key

this makes perfect sense, because you should always only share your public key, not the private one :)