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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.

How to add your SSH key on Clever Cloud?

I don’t have any, I want to create an SSH key

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

I maybe have SSH keys, I want to check

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.

Find your SSH key

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:

Linux and Mac

  1. Whether you use Mac or Linux, open your Terminal application.
  2. Run cd ~/.ssh/ in your Terminal.
  3. If the folder exists, run ls and check if a pair of key exists : id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub.

Using id_rsa and id_rsa.pub is fine too. We are just advocating the use of ed25519.

It is smaller to copy and way stronger than 2048-bit RSA keys.

If you can find them, you do not need to generate a new one, simply go to the following “Add your key on Clever Cloud” part!


Windows

  1. If you don’t have it, download Git for Windows and install it.
  2. Run Git Bash (from the Start Menu or from the Explorer with the contextual menu (right click)).
  3. Run cd ~/.ssh/ in your Terminal.
  4. If the folder exists, run ls and check if a pair of key exists : id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub.

Using id_rsa and id_rsa.pub is fine too. We are just advocating the use of ed25519.

It is smaller to copy and way stronger than 2048-bit RSA keys.

If you can find them, you do not need to generate a new one, simply go to the following “Add your key on Clever Cloud” part!

Specific SSH key for Clever Cloud

If you want to use a specific key for Clever Cloud, you can set it in your SSH config by adding this:

Host *.clever-cloud.com 
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/clevercloud

Add your SSH key on Clever Cloud

Public SSH Key

To declare your public SSH Key on Clever Cloud, in the 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.

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.

Private SSH Key

If your company manages its own artifacts in a private repository (like, you can only access them via git+ssh or sftp), and you need a private key to connect to the server, you can either set it in an environment variable or commit it in your application’s Clever Cloud repository.

That key will be installed in ~/.ssh/ before the start of the build. So the dependency manager will use it to fetch libs only accessible by ssh.

NB: Please provide a key without pass phrase, or the system will be unable to unlock it

Environment variable

Set your key as the value of the CC_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY variable. If you want it to be saved to a specific file, you can set the CC_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE variable.

Committed file

First, you need to add the file clevercloud/ssh.json, its content is pretty straight-forward:

{
  "privateKeyFile": "path/to/file"
}

The privateKeyFile field must be a path to a SSH private key. The path must be relative to the root of your repository. e.g. if your private key file is in the clevercloud folder and is named my_key, the privateKeyFile field will be "clevercloud/my_key".

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 Mac. 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. Please update your Clever Cloud SSH key path accordingly.

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Paris zone)
Host push-par-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-par-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Roubaix zone)
Host push-rbx-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-rbx-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Warsaw zone)
Host push-wsw-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-wsw-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Montreal zone)
Host push-mtl-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-mtl-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Singapore zone)
Host push-sgp-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-sgp-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

# config for Clever Cloud specific key (Sydney zone)
Host push-syd-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  Hostname push-syd-clevercloud-customers.services.clever-cloud.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_clevercloud

Need help about SSH keys?

Contact us at support@clever-cloud.com or you can read more about SSH Keys.

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