# A bit confused about ssh keys management and nest.pijul.com

**URL:** <https://discourse.pijul.org/t/a-bit-confused-about-ssh-keys-management-and-nest-pijul-com/1090>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [August 12, 2023, 3:59pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/a-bit-confused-about-ssh-keys-management-and-nest-pijul-com/1090 "2023-08-12T15:59:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vgu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e79b87/32.png) [@vgu](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/vgu)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2023, 3:59pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/a-bit-confused-about-ssh-keys-management-and-nest-pijul-com/1090/1 "2023-08-12T15:59:30Z")

</div>

Hi

I just created a nest account named `myname`, and tried using a ssh key to retrieve and push some project for testing, as i’m new to both pijul and [nest.pijul.com](http://nest.pijul.com). I though it might be useful to report the confusion in ran into here.

I created `myproject` on my [nest](http://nest.pijul.com) account, created an ssh key and a dedicated Host `pijul_host` in my `~/.ssh/config` (I’m running linux), added the ssh key in my nest account. As the documentation mentionned, i created a `~/.config/pijul/config.toml` file with email and username.

I cloned `myproject` using

```
pijul clone pijul_host:myname/myproject

```

created a file and `record`ed it using

```
pijul record

```

then I pushed using

```
pijul push pijul_host:myname/myproject

```

It worked… but in the meantime, pijul asked for info already in `~/.config/pijul/config.toml`, created an `identity.toml` and `secretkey.json` file in `~/.config/pijul/identities/myname/` so i’m not event sure my initial `config.toml` and ssh key where used.

So I’m confused by the procedure and wonder what command I should have run to clone/record/push in order to use my initial `config.toml` and the ssh key I generated and referenced in `~/.ssh/config`. What would be a step by step procedure to do that ?

Unrelated: is there a way to set a per-repo identity file (as opposed to a user global one in `~/`) ?

On a sidenote, It would be very nice if `nest` was showing a brief how-to message à la github when a new repo is created.

Thanks for reading, have a good day.