Requesting a Linux Foundation Account

Contributions to the Hyperledger Fabric code base require a Linux Foundation account. Follow the steps below to create a Linux Foundation account.

Creating a Linux Foundation ID

  1. Go to the Linux Foundation ID website.
  2. Select the option I need to create a Linux Foundation ID.
  3. Fill out the form that appears:
  4. Open your email account and look for a message with the subject line: “Validate your Linux Foundation ID email”.
  5. Open the received URL to validate your email address.
  6. Verify the browser displays the message You have successfully    validated your e-mail address.
  7. Access Gerrit by selecting Sign In:
  8. Use your Linux Foundation ID to Sign In:

Configuring Gerrit to Use SSH

Gerrit uses SSH to interact with your Git client. A SSH private key needs to be generated on the development machine with a matching public key on the Gerrit server.

If you already have a SSH key-pair, skip this section.

As an example, we provide the steps to generate the SSH key-pair on a Linux environment. Follow the equivalent steps on your OS.

  1. Create a key-pair, enter:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "John Doe john.doe@example.com"

Note: This will ask you for a password to protect the private key as it generates a unique key. Please keep this password private, and DO NOT enter a blank password.

The generated key-pair is found in: ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

  1. Add the private key in the id_rsa file in your key ring, e.g.:
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Once the key-pair has been generated, the public key must be added to Gerrit.

Follow these steps to add your public key id_rsa.pub to the Gerrit account:

  1. Go to Gerrit.
  2. Click on your account name in the upper right corner.
  3. From the pop-up menu, select Settings.
  4. On the left side menu, click on SSH Public Keys.
  5. Paste the contents of your public key ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and click Add key.

Note: The id_rsa.pub file can be opened with any text editor. Ensure that all the contents of the file are selected, copied and pasted into the Add SSH key window in Gerrit.

Note: The ssh key generation instructions operate on the assumtion that you are using the default naming. It is possible to generate multiple ssh Keys and to name the resulting files differently. See the ssh-keygen documentation for details on how to do that. Once you have generated non-default keys, you need to configure ssh to use the correct key for Gerrit. In that case, you need to create a ~/.ssh/config file modeled after the one below.

host gerrit.hyperledger.org
 HostName gerrit.hyperledger.org
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_hyperledger_gerrit
 User <LFID>

where is your Linux Foundation ID and the value of IdentityFile is the name of the public key file you generated.

Warning: Potential Security Risk! Do not copy your private key ~/.ssh/id_rsa Use only the public ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Checking Out the Source Code

  1. Ensure that SSH has been set up properly. See Configuring Gerrit to Use SSH for details.
  2. Clone the repository with your Linux Foundation ID ():
git clone ssh://<LFID>@gerrit.hyperledger.org:29418/fabric fabric

You have successfully checked out a copy of the source code to your local machine.