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396 CHAPTER 14 Deployment
14.5.1 Deploy keys
If your repository was private on GitHub, you would clone it with the URL of
git@github.com:our_username/ticketee.git and would need to authenticate with a
private key. You shouldn’t copy your private key to the server because if a malicious
person gains access to the server they will also then have your private key, which may
be used for other things.
To solve this particular conundrum, generate another private/public key pair just
for the server itself and put the public key on GitHub to be a deploy key for this repository.
This will allow the server to clone the repository.
To do this, run the following command as the ticketeeapp.com user on your
server:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Press Enter to put the key at the default ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub location. You can enter a
password for it, but if you do this you will be prompted for it on every deploy. It’s really
personal preference whether or not to do this.
This command will generate two new files: a public and private key. The private
key should remain secret on the server and shouldn’t be shared with any external parties.
The public key, however, can be given to anybody. You’re going to put this key on
GitHub now.
Run the cat command to get the contents of the public key file, like this:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAA...
You should copy the output of this command into your clipboard. Your next step is to
go to the repository on GitHub and click the Admin link in the bar in the view for the
repository, shown in figure 14.1.
From here, press the Deploy Keys link and then paste the key into the box, calling it
ticketeeapp.com to keep up with your current naming scheme, as shown in figure 14.2.
When you’re done here, click the Add Key button, which will add the key you’ve
specified to the list of deploy keys on GitHub. You should then be able to run a git
clone command on the server using the private URL to clone your repository:
git clone git@github.com:our_username/ticketee.git ~/ticketee
Figure 14.1 Admin button