SSH Keys

You need to add a SSH key to your Clever Cloud’s account to deploy via Git. SSH keys are used to establish a secure connection between your computer and Clever Cloud. A user can have multiple SSH keys.

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Accounts cannot share the same SSH key. A SSH key is used to identify the actions made by a user and must be associated with only one account. If a key is used by more than one account, a warning will be displayed in the console.

How to add your SSH key on Clever Cloud?

Generate the key

In your Terminal, enter the following bash line:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@youremail.com"

This command creates a new SSH key using the provided email, so that the owner of the key can be identified.

Save the key

When prompted in which file you want to save the key, just press enter.
If it says that the file already exists, enter n for no.
Type ls, verify the presence of the file and jump to Add your SSH key on Clever Cloud.

Enter a passphrase

When asked, enter a passphrase:

Generating public/private ed25519 key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/your_home_path/.ssh/id_ed25519):
# Now you should enter a passphrase.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [Type a passphrase]
Enter same passphrase again: [Type passphrase again]

Which should give you something like this:

Your identification has been saved in /your_home_path/.ssh/id_ed25519.
Your public key has been saved in /your_home_path/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
01:0e:e5:2d:ab:98:d6:17:a1:6d:f0:68:9f:d0:a2:db your_email@youremail.com

Add a FIDO/U2F SSH key

Since OpenSSH 8.2, generated keys can require a security device compatible with the FIDO/U2F standards (such as Nitrokeys, Solokeys or Yubikeys) to complete the authentication process. To generate such key, plug the device to your machine and enter this command:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519-sk -C "your_email@youremail.com"

Under macOS, you may need to install Homebrew, an OpenSSH version including full FIDO/U2F support, and use ECDSA key format:

brew install openssh
ssh-keygen -t ecdsa-sk -C "your_email@youremail.com"
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You can use options related to security devices adding them with the -O argument (for example -O resident). They’re detailed here.

Checking of existing SSH keys

GitHub account and SSH key on Clever Cloud

If your account is linked to GitHub, a panel with your GitHub SSH keys will appear in the “SSH Keys” tab. You can add any key already present in your GitHub account by clicking on the import button next to it.

Finding SSH key locally

You may already have an SSH key and so do not need to generate a new one. To check if you have one, follow these steps:

Add a public SSH key on Clever Cloud

From the Console

To declare your public SSH Key on Clever Cloud, in the Console’s left navigation bar, go in “Profile” and in the “SSH Keys” tab.

Add the key by entering a name and the public SSH key. The key is the entire contents of the id_[ed25519/rsa].pub file including the id_ed25519/ssh-rsa part and your email.

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Your public SSH key must be associated with only one account.

If you see “access denied” or “password:” when you push on Clever Cloud, your SSH keys may be invalid or not available on Clever Cloud. Please check that you SSH key is present and valid in your profile.

Through CC API or Clever cURL

You can also add a public SSH key from the command line with a simple cURL request to our API. The simpler way to do that is to use our CLI, Clever Tools, and its clever curl command once logged in:

clever curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data "\"$(cat ~/.ssh/yourkey.pub)\"" https://api.clever-cloud.com/v2/self/keys/newkeyname

Use a private SSH key in an application

If you want to clone a repository from a private repository, you can add a private SSH key to an application by creating a folder clevercloud at the root of your application and creating the file clevercloud/ssh.json with the following content:

clevercloud/ssh.json
{
    "privateKeyFile": "path/to/file"
}

Of course you need to provide a valid path to a file that contains a valid key and that you will push on the Clever Cloud git remote.

Check your SSH configuration

To check if your SSH key is correctly configured, you can try to run:

ssh git@push.clever-cloud.com

The first time, you may have to type “yes” to continue.

If you see:

git@push-par-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

This error can occur when your SSH agent has not be configured to use your SSH key.

Most of the time, it is due to the presence of multiple SSH keys generated by 3rd party software, like GitHub for macOS. To fix this you will need to configure your SSH agent.

Configure your SSH agent

You can add those lines into your ~/.ssh/config file. It tells your SSH agent which key to pick for a given hostname. Update your Clever Cloud SSH key path accordingly.

~/.ssh/config
Host push-*.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud
  IdentitiesOnly yes
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Need help about SSH keys?
Contact us at support@clever-cloud.com or you can read more about SSH Keys on the official Git Documentation ↗.
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