Removing and re-adding ssh keys doesnt change the email associated?

Question

This seems like maybe a bug? I've changed my email in GitHub to use the noreply form that is more private. I tried changing the email in the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file and using ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa, but it says my old email. I've only adding this key (with no other key on this machine) today. So I tried using ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/id_rsa to delete the the keys and add again, and also manually deleted them, and checked both the known_hosts and authorized_keys files and deleted known_hosts.old file, but still the old email. Tried exiting the shell, restarting sshd, and then had to use eval ssh-agent to appease the "Could not open a connection to your authentication agent." error, but still no success. Any ideas?

Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa ([email protected])

Oddly, when I remove the same key it says:

Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa ([email protected])

Luckily my GH fetch worked, but still very puzzling. This post says its just stored as comment and not inside the hash: https://serverfault.com/questions/309171/possible-to-change-email-address-in-keypair

Answer 1

Yes, you change the comment via the command below, then you can remove and add it back.

$> ssh-keygen -c Enter file in which the key is (/Users/bob/.ssh/id_rsa): id_ed25519 Enter passphrase: Old comment: [email protected] New comment: [email protected]

then

ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519