This blog will guide you through a detailed but yet easy steps for setup SSH between Jenkins and Github .Using this approach, you do not need to provide your credentials to configure the git repo in your Jenkins job. and you will achieve the password-less connection.However in order to launch linux instance on AWS where Jenkins is installed, please follow this blog.

If you want to see the video for this article, click here

Agenda:

1. Setup a user jenkins on your Jenkins server
2. Generate the SSH keys
3. Copy the the public key in Github
4. Configure in Jenkins Credentials
5. Configure a sample job in Jenkins using SSH connection

Prerequisite:

1. Jenkins Server
2. Github Account
3. Setup a jenkins user for the ssh connection

Configure jenkins user

Step 1. Firstly, generate the ssh keys for the jenkins user

Ensure the ssh-agent is running

sudo -su jenkins 
ssh-keygen
eval $(ssh-agent -s)
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

SSH key is generated successfully for the jenkins user and to achieve the password-less connection between Jenkins and Github

Step 2. Copy the public key using the below command

Step 1. Go to github repository -> setting ->add deploy keys

Configure Jenkins Credentials

Now we will configure the private key of the jenkins user in the Jenkins configuration

Add SSH Key inside Jenkins

• Login to Jenkins
• Now go to Manage Jenkins from left panel inside Jenkins console and then click Manage Credentials:

After this, select ‘Add Credentials’:

This will open a new form for us. In the Kind dropdown, select ‘SSH username with private key’ and then give a name for it.

Copy the private key from the jenkins server for jenkins user

Now you can clone any git repo in this jenkins instance. You do not need to provide the credentials while configuring the job in Jenkins

Configure Jenkins Job

• Create a freestyle job in Jenkins
• Configure SSH url of your git repo

Summary:

Finally congratulations!! we have successfully setup SSH between Jenkins and Github for achieving the password less connection . Using this approach, you do not need to provide your credentials to configure the git repo in your Jenkins job.