If you are using the SSH protocol, ensure sure your public key is in Bitbucket and loaded on the local system to which you are cloning. ..What does this sentence mean?

[kj1]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Clone a repository

"If you are using the SSH protocol, ensure sure your public key is in Bitbucket and loaded on the local system to which you are cloning."

I don´t understand this sentence. What do I have to do? How do I "ensure sure my public key is in Bitbucket and loaded on the local system to which I am cloning". Which steps should I use to do this? I´m a beginner with bitbucket.

[Jon Bevan _Adaptavist_ · Accepted solution]

You'll need to learn a little about SSH.

Here's how to create a new SSH key pair (one half of the pair is private and shouldn't be shared and the other half is public) and load it into your local system: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent/

Here's how to add that key into an account on Bitbucket: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/add-an-ssh-key-to-an-account-302811853.html (or alternatively, use a key for deployment purposes - https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/use-deployment-keys-294486051.html)

And here's some further information about how this works: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/use-the-ssh-protocol-with-bitbucket-cloud-221449711.html

[kj1]

Thank you guys very much! It was a great help! I understund much better now. 

[Michael Mai]

As I understand "loaded on the local system to which you are cloning" is: You need to ensure, that your git-client is using the SSH-public key for the connection. E.g. using "git+ssh" as protocol and not "http". Configure the SSH-client, the GIT-client is using, to use the private key, that is associated with the public key.