Troubleshooting the “Your SSH Key Has Expired” Error in Git

When working with Git, you may encounter the following error while attempting to push your changes to a remote repository:

git push
remote: 
remote: ========================================================================
remote: 
remote: ERROR: Your SSH key has expired.
remote: 
remote: ========================================================================
remote: 
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

This error indicates that the SSH key associated with your Git account has expired or is no longer valid. This can prevent you from accessing your repository and pushing your changes. In this article, we’ll explore how to resolve this issue step-by-step.

Step 1: Confirm the Issue

First, confirm that the error message explicitly states that the SSH key has expired. This is crucial as the error message could also indicate other issues like incorrect access rights or a missing repository.

Step 2: Check Your Current SSH Key

To verify which SSH keys are currently configured on your system, use the following command:

ls -al ~/.ssh