How to Integrate Jenkins and GitHub using SSH keys? | Jenkins and GitHub Integration

GitHub removed password authentication support from August 13, 2021 instead it recommends to use either OAuth or Personal Access Token. We will see how to connect to GitHub from Jenkins using SSH keys instead of using user name and password.

It is also a good practice to use SSH keys in Jenkins jobs instead of using user name and password.

Watch the steps in YouTube channel:

Pre-requisites:

• Jenkins is up and running
• Credentials plug-in installed in Jenkins

Create SSH keys in your Jenkins EC2 instance

ssh-keygen

enter four times. this will create keys in .ssh folder.

Copy and paste the public key

sudo cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Add public Keys into your respective GitHub

Add public keys into your Repository--> settings--> Deploy keys section

Click on Add Deploy Key and enter public keys and save.

Add Private Keys in Jenkins Master

Login Jenkins. Go to Manage Jenkins. click on Credentials

Click on Jenkins

Click on Global Credentials

Click on Add Credentials

Choose SSH username with private key

Choose SSH username with private key
username can be anything
Click on enter directly under private key option and Click Add

Copy and paste private key(not public key) of your from Jenkins instance. command is below:
sudo cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa

copy the content of whole output from above command.

Click OK to save.

Now go to any Jenkins Job, you can choose this option for checking out from GitHub. Make sure you enter SSH url not https url.

That's it. This is how you use SSH url and private keys to checkout code from bitbucket or Github without entering username/password in Jenkins.

Click here to authenticate with GitHub using Personal Access Token.