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The credential manager you will use on GNU/Linux to the personal access token depends on your desktop environment. If you are using a desktop environment with support for GNOME Keyring, then follow the instructions in the GNOME Keyring section. If you are using a GNU/Linux installation without a desktop environment (e.g. when using SSH to connect to a server) or a desktop environment that does not support the GNOME Keyring (e.g. XFCE, KDE, i3), then you need to pick a credential manager that suits your security and usability needs. The following sections will present four common choices for storing personal access tokens when you are unable to use GNOME Keyring:

• GPG
• age
• pass
• plain files

GNOME Keyring

Credential Manager

On GNU/Linux installations that features the GNOME Keyring the recommended setup is to use libsecret and the "libsecret credential helper" in order to use GNOME Keyring as the credential manager Please follow the instructions for setting up libsecret for the GNU/Linux distribution you are using.

Fedora

Fedora 30, 31 and 32 comes with libsecret and GNOME Keyring installed by default. When you install the git package you also get the libsecret credential helper automatically installed. To configure git to use the libsecret credential helper run the following command:

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sudo dnf install seahorse

Ubuntu

Ubuntu 19.10 and 18.04.4 (LTS) comes with libsecret and GNOME Keyring installed by default. Unfortunately even if you install the Git package you will not get a binary version of the libsecret credential helper installed (you only get the source). This means you have to compile the libsecret credential helper yourself. Compile the libsecret credential with the following two commands:

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$ sudo apt install seahorse

Personal Access Token

To generate a a Personal Access Token on GitHub go to https://github.com/settings/tokens and and click on "Generate new token". You only need to select the "repo" scope (permission). After you have generated your token, store it in the GNOME Keyring using git token store:

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