Git's famous "ERROR: Permission to .git denied to user"

Question

I have tried googling and read through https://help.github.com/en/articles/connecting-to-github-with-ssh and various, various guides. I am unable to git push -u origin master or git push origin master ( the same command ).

I've had my git account for at least 2 or so years. I've successfully been able to create repos and push -u origin master fine on my laptop but on this desktop I'm having issues.

Here's what I tried:

1. I have setup my git user name

2. I have setup my git user email

3. I have uploaded the contents of my /home/meder/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to github's account page. I have verified I did not paste any whitespace

4. I have created a ~/.ssh/config with these contents:

  Host github.com
  User git
  Hostname github.com
  PreferredAuthentications publickey
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

I have chmodded the .ssh to 700, id_rsa 600

5. I have added the proper remote origin without making typos : git remote add origin [email protected]:medero/cho.git

6. To confirm #5, here is my .git/config. The directory is correct and not another directory:

[remote "origin"]
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
        url = [email protected]:medero/cho.git

7. ssh [email protected] -v gives me a successful Authentication

8. One weird thing is, the username which it greets me with has t appended to it. My github username is medero, not medert.

Hi mederot! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

9. I am not behind a proxy or firewall

10. The key is offered, heres the output from -v:

debug1: Host 'github.com' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/meder/.ssh/known_hosts:58
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/meder/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Remote: Forced command: gerve mederot
debug1: Remote: Port forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: X11 forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Agent forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Pty allocation disabled.
debug1: Server accepts key: { some stuff, dont know if i should share it

debug1: Remote: Forced command: gerve mederot
debug1: Remote: Port forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: X11 forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Agent forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Pty allocation disabled.
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).

11. Here are the commands I used

mkdir cho
git init
touch README
git add README
git commit -m 'test'
git remote add origin [email protected]:medero/cho.git
git push -u origin master

12. I don't want to create a new SSH key.

13. If I git clone using ssh and make an edit, commit, and git push, I get the same exact thing.

14. Here's the actual error:

$ git push
ERROR: Permission to medero/cho.git denied to mederot.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

15. I have setup my github username and github token:

$ git config --global github.user medero $ git config --global github.token 0123456789yourf0123456789tokenSets the GitHub token for all git instances on the system

16. I have confirmed my github username is NOT mederot and my github token IS CORRECT per my account page ( validated first 2 chars and last 2 chars ).

17. To confirm #16, ~/.gitconfig contains

[github]
    token = mytoken...
    user = medero

18. I did ssh-key add ~/.ssh/id_rsa if that's even necessary...

THEORIES:

I suspect there's something fishy because when I get ssh authenticated, the user greeting is mederot and not medero, which is my acct. Could something in my github account possibly be incorrectly cached?

I also suspect some local ssh caching weirdness because if i mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa KAKA and mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub POOPOO, and do ssh [email protected] -v, it still Authenticates me and says it serves my /home/meder/.ssh/id_rsa when I renamed it?! It has to be cached?!

Answer 1

In step 18, I assume you mean ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa? If so, that explains this:

I also suspect some local ssh caching weirdness because if i mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa KAKA and mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub POOPOO, and do ssh [email protected] -v, it still Authenticates me and says it serves my /home/meder/.ssh/id_rsa when I renamed it?! It has to be cached?!

... since the ssh-agent is caching your key.

If you look on GitHub, there is a mederot account. Are you sure that this is nothing to do with you? GitHub shouldn't allow the same SSH public key to be added to two accounts, since when you are using the [email protected]:... URLs it's identifying the user based on the SSH key. (That this shouldn't be allowed is confirmed here.)

So, I suspect (in decreasing order of likelihood) that one of the following is the case:

1. You created the mederot account previously and added your SSH key to it.
2. Someone else has obtained a copy of your public key and added it to the mederot GitHub account.
3. There's a horrible bug in GitHub.

If 1 isn't the case then I would report this to GitHub, so they can check about 2 or 3.

More :

ssh-add -l check if there is more than one identify exists if yes, remove it by ssh-add -d "that key file"

Answer 2

After Googling for few days, I found this is the only question similar to my situation.

However, I just solved the problem! So I am putting my answer here to help anyone else searching for this issue.

Here is what I did:

1. Open "Keychain Access.app" (You can find it in Spotlight or LaunchPad)

2. Select "All items" in Category

3. Search "git"

4. Delete every old & strange item

5. Try to Push again and it just WORKED

Answer 3

If problem is coming on windows then remove the Credentials from the Windows history.

• Go to Credential Manager
• Go to Windows Credentials
• Delete the entries under Generic Credentials
• Try connecting again.This time , it should prompt you for the correct username and password.

remove credentials from git

Answer 4

On Mac, if you have multiple GitHub logins and are not using SSH, force the correct login by using:

git remote set-url origin https://[email protected]/username/repo-name.git

This also works if you're having issues pushing to a private repository.

Answer 5

Its due to a conflict.

Clear all keys from ssh-agent

ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/id_rsa
ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/github

Add the github ssh key

ssh-add   ~/.ssh/github

It should work now.

Answer 6

I am using Mac and the issue is solved by deleting github record from keychain access app: Here is what i did:

1. Open "Keychain Access.app" (You can find it in Spotlight orLaunchPad)
2. Select "All items" in Category
3. Search "git"
4. Delete every old & strange items Try to Push again and it just WORKED

Above steps are copied from @spyar for the ease.

Answer 7

I find the solution is the same as @spyar provide which is the Keychain Access app stored the old username.

There are 2 solutions for this situation:

1. Delete the info in Keychain Access by
   • Open Keychain Access app
   • Search for GitHub
   • Delete corresponding credentials

Or

2. If you want to use ssh key. You just change your Repo url from https

   https://github.com/username/repo.git

   into

   [email protected]:username/repo.git

Answer 8

I recently ran into this issue for on old repo on my machine that had been pushed up using https. steps 5 and 6 solved my issue by re-setting the remote url for my repo from using the https url to the ssh url

checking the remote is using the https url

> git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (push)

then re-setting the origin to use the ssh url

> git remote set-url origin [email protected]:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git

verifying new remote

> git remote -v
origin  [email protected]:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (fetch)
origin  [email protected]:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (push)

could now successfully git push -u origin

i'm still not sure what setting i would have changed that might have caused the push to fail when the remote is https but this was the solution to my issue

Answer 9

I had the same problem as you. After a long time spent Googling, I found out my error was caused by multiple users that had added the same key in their accounts.

So, here is my solution: delete the wrong-user's ssh-key (I can do it because the wrong-user is also my account). If the wrong-user isn't your account, you may need to change your ssh-key, but I don't think this gonna happen.

And I think your problem may be caused by a mistyping error in your accounts name.

Answer 10

I encountered this error when using Travis CI to deploy content, which involved pushing edits to a repository.

I eventually solved the issue by updating the GitHub personal access token associated with the Travis account with the public_repo scope access permission:

Answer 11

Same issue was observed when pushing to a respository:

$ git push --set-upstream origin new-operator-test
ERROR: Permission to redhat-openshift-ecosystem/redhat-marketplace-operators.git denied to cniackz.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

What was done is making sure you clone your forked repository:

git clone [email protected]:cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators.git
git checkout -b new-branch
<performed the changes>
git add <files>
git commit -m <files>

And it worked:

$ git push --set-upstream origin new-branch
Enumerating objects: 9, done.
Counting objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Delta compression using up to 10 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (7/7), 643 bytes | 643.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 7 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (2/2), completed with 2 local objects.
remote: 
remote: Create a pull request for 'new-branch' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators/pull/new/new-branch
remote: 
To github.com:cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators.git
 * [new branch]      new-branch -> new-branch
Branch 'new-branch' set up to track remote branch 'new-branch' from 'origin'.

It is suspected that to start with, it was not used the forked repository but the one from redhat and this would explain the issue since cniackz user does not have access to that repository but to forked only.

Answer 12

This problem is also caused by:

If you are on a mac/linux, and are using 'ControlMaster' in your ~/.ssh/config, there may be some ssh control master processes running.

To find them, run:

ps aux | grep '\[mux\]'

And kill the relevant ones.

Answer 13

I too ran into this, what caused this for me is that while cloning the repo I was pushing my changes to, I picked up the clone URL from an incognito tab without signing in. (I am still clueless on how it effects). That for some reason led to git picking another user account. When i tried it again from a proper signed in page it worked like usual for me.

Answer 14

I also happen to come across this issue while working on my MAC So, the problem is this. I had once logged in from one of my old GitHub account. Now, I am using a different GitHub account. I solved using the below steps-

1. Open "Keychain Access.app"
2. Select "All items" in Category
3. Search "Github"
4. Open that entry,
5. and change the Account to new github username.

Try to Push again and it will work