Cannot use SSH key

[Gameking1happy]

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Question

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Actions Checkout

Discussion Details

  Load key "/home/runner/work/_temp/1facdcd8-74b4-4c09-9880-f9039d8151ef": error in libcrypto
  [email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).
  Error: fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

I get the error above, below is the yml.

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ssh-key: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_KEY }}
      - name: Identify
        run: |
          git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
          git config --global user.name "github-actions"
      - name: test
        run: |
          touch test.txt
          git add test.txt
          git commit -m "test"
          git push origin HEAD:main

[phgoncalves2603]

That error

Load key "/home/runner/work/_temp/...": error in libcrypto
[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).

Usually means the SSH key in your workflow (secrets.DEPLOY_KEY) isn’t being read correctly, it might be invalid, misformatted, or not actually needed.

If you’re just pushing changes back to the same repository, you don’t need to set up an SSH key at all. GitHub Actions already provides a built-in GITHUB_TOKEN that can handle authentication safely.

If your workflow needs to push to another repository, then you’ll need to create and add a proper deploy key:
Generate a new key locally (ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "github-actions").
Add the public key to the target repo’s Deploy Keys (with “Allow write access”).
Add the private key to the current repo’s Secrets as DEPLOY_KEY.
Double-check that the private key starts with BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY and doesn’t have extra spaces or blank lines.

[Gameking1happy]

if i push without a key branch rules block it