Managing SSH keys within Jenkins for Git

Question

I'm trying to get Jenkins up and running with a GitHub hosted repository. I'm not sure I have to try and manage multiple deploy keys because The repository has multiple git submodules.

My personal GitHub user account is a collaborator of each of the projects I wish to pull in with Jenkins, so I've generated an SSH key within /var/lib/jenkins/.ssh and added it to my personal GitHub account.

However, when I try and add the repository URL to my Jenkins project configuration, I get:

Failed to connect to repository : Command "git ls-remote -h git@github.com:***/***.git HEAD" returned status code 128:
stdout: 
stderr: Host key verification failed. 
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

The github.com host which Jenkins tries to connect to is not listed under the Jenkins user's $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts. Jenkins has its own ssh directory to store the list of public keys and known hosts.

The easiest thing to do would be:

# Login as the jenkins user and specify shell explicity,
# since the default shell is /bin/false for most
# jenkins installations.
sudo su jenkins -s /bin/bash
cd SOME_TMP_DIR
# git clone YOUR_GITHUB_URL
# Allow adding the SSH host key to your known_hosts
# Exit from su
exit

Answer 2

Have you tried logging in as the jenkins user?

Try this:

sudo -i -u jenkins #For RedHat you might have to do 'su' instead.
git clone git@github.com:your/repo.git

Often times you see failure if the host has not been added or authorized (hence I always manually login as hudson/jenkins for the first connection to github/bitbucket) but that link you included supposedly fixes that.

If the above doesn't work try recopying the key. Make sure its the pub key (ie id_rsa.pub). Maybe you missed some characters!