Checking for existing SSH keys

Before you generate an SSH key, you can check to see if you have any existing SSH keys.

1. Open Git Bash.

2. Enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present:

$ ls -al ~/.ssh
# Lists the files in your .ssh directory, if they exist

3. Check the directory listing to see if you already have a public SSH key. By default, the filenames of the public keys are one of the following:

id_rsa.pub
id_ecdsa.pub
id_ed25519.pub

If you don’t have an existing public and private key pair, or don’t wish to use any that are available to connect to GitHub, then generate a new SSH key.
If you see an existing public and private key pair listed (for example id_rsa.pub and id_rsa) that you would like to use to connect to GitHub, you can add your SSH key to the ssh-agent.

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