Github multiple accounts one computer always sees one account

Question

This is probably not a dup; I have read through many similar problems on StackOverflow but not this issue.

I am trying to use multiple git accounts on Ubuntu Linux a

Answer 1

This happens because ssh-agent caches the ssh key (you can even remove the file and it will still allow ssh to connect successfully until the cache is cleared) and will prioritise the cached keys even over the ones specified via IdentityFile. You can see which files are cached by running:

ssh-add -l

You can force ssh-agent to ignore the cache by including IdentitiesOnly "yes" in the .ssh/config for each connection:

Host github
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  IdentitiesOnly yes

Host github-work
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_dsa_work
  IdentitiesOnly yes

More information here: http://sealedabstract.com/code/github-ssh-with-multiple-identities-the-slightly-more-definitive-guide/

It took me quite a while to discover this too, hope it helps someone.