Creating a SSH Public Key on OSX

You generate an SSH key through Mac OS X by using the Terminal application. Once you upload a valid public SSH key, Gerrit can authenticate you based on this key.

Finding the Terminal App

The terminal provides you with a text-based command line interface to the Unix shell of Mac OS X.

To open the Mac OS X Terminal, follow these steps:

In Finder, choose Utilities from the Go menu. Find the Terminal application in the Utilities window. Double-click the Terminal application. The Terminal window opens with the command line prompt displaying the name of your machine and your username.

An SSH key consists of a pair of files. One is the private key, which you should never give to anyone. No one will ever ask you for it and if so, simply ignore them - they are trying to steal it. The other is the public key. When you generate your keys, you will use ssh-keygen to store the keys in a safe location so you can authenticate with Gerrit.

To generate SSH keys in Mac OS X, follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following command in the Terminal window:

    ssh-keygen -t ed25519
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    This starts the key generation process. When you execute this command, the ssh-keygen utility prompts you to indicate where to store the key.

  2. Press the ENTER key to accept the default location. The ssh-keygen utility prompts you for a passphrase.
  3. Type in a passphrase. You can also hit the ENTER key to accept the default (no passphrase). However, this is not recommended.

After you confirm the passphrase, the system generates the key pair and you will see output like this:

Your identification has been saved in /Users/yourmacusername/.ssh/id_ed25519.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/yourmacusername/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
ae:89:72:0b:85:da:5a:f4:7c:1f:c2:43:fd:c6:44:38 yourmacusername@yourmac.local
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|                 |
|         .       |
|        E .      |
|   .   . o       |
|  o . . S .      |
| + + o . +       |
|. + o = o +      |
| o...o * o       |
|.  oo.o .        |
+-----------------+
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Your private key is saved to the id_rsa file in the .ssh subdirectory of your home directory and is used to verify the public key you use belongs to your Gerrit account.

Your public key is saved to a file called id_rsa.pub in the .ssh subdirectory of your home directory. You can copy it to your clipboard using the following command:

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
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Now you can head over to Gerrit_, go to settings and paste your public key as described here.

Gerrit is using the special port 29418 instead of the default SSH port 22 which has to be configured accordingly. This can be done in your local ~/.ssh/config file which would contain the following sections then:

 /.ssh/config 
Host review.typo3.org
   Port 29418
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Testing your connection:

shell command 
ssh -T <YOUR_TYPO3_USERNAME>@review.typo3.org
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