1164

Anybody seen this error and know what to do?

I'm using the terminal, I'm in the root, the GitHub repository exists and I don't know what to do now.

> git push -u origin master Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists. 
10

58 Answers 58

934

GitHub isn't able to authenticate you. So, either you aren't setup with an SSH key, because you haven't set one up on your machine, or your key isn't associated with your GitHub account.

You can also use the HTTPS URL instead of the SSH/git URL to avoid having to deal with SSH keys. This is GitHub's recommended method.

Further, GitHub has a help page specifically for that error message, and explains in more detail everything you could check.

To solve it:

  1. You should have a public key in your home directory, thus print the content of your public key, in Linux distro run for example cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub (if the prior doesn't work, check the keys inside ~/.ssh/ with .pub extension)

  2. Add the content of such a public key to your Github account: click your profile photo -> Settings-> SSH and GPG keys -> New SSH key or Add SSH key

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

17 Comments

This error is not exclusive to GitHub. I am getting the same error with BitBucket, and I'm scratching my head as to how to resolve it...
The helping part is using ssh -vT [email protected] from the Github help page to help debug what key your repo is using. I suggest you add it in your answer.
The upvote of using HTTPS instead of SSL is a bit disappointing. SSH is far more convenient. The suggestion from @MaximeBernard above solved the issue for me: GIT was not looking at the right place for the .ssh directory. Using ssh -vT [email protected] provides a lot of information as to why it is not working.
per my comment above, a third option is that the command is being sent from an account other than the one with the ssh keys (e.g. running as root).
As @theapache64 mentioned: If you're on a Mac and have already generated an ssh key "ssh-add" may indeed be what you're missing. Worked for me.
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317

I know about this problem. After add ssh key, add you ssh key to ssh agent too (from official docs

eval `ssh-agent -s` ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa 

After it all work fine, git can view proper key, before couldn't.

You should replace id_rsa with your key.

Example: ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa => ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25511.pub

19 Comments

Prefect! Worked on my MacOS X.
Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.
try to run this: eval ssh-agent -s
@MonaJalal use ssh-add ~/.ssh/github_rsa
actually it worked well with me, but after restart my computer I found the same issue return with me, so do you want me to doing it with every time I need to deploy my project on the server ?!
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168

Did you create a config file in your ~/.ssh directory? It should have contents like these:

Host github.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_rsa 

Assuming that you created an ssh key named github_rsa

and uploaded it to GitHub...

NOTE: You must follow this way of explicit configuration if you have more than 1 key (2 and more) in your ~/.ssh/ directory. If you don't specify key this way, then first key in order is taken and used for github authentication, so it depends on the key file name then.

9 Comments

I had generated the ssh-key and was able to work well, for quite some time, with no issues. One fine day (probably after restart), it stopped working, whereas the key was intact at github and on my local system. I added the "config file", specifying the key-mapped-to-domain. Details provided above in igor-ganapolsky-answer. It works fine !
This indeed solves my problem! Many thanks! But I have a question. Before using your method, ssh -T [email protected] responses correctly, while git push -u origin master gives the same error as in the question. Why I can connect to it correctly but cannot push to it or fetch from it?
EVERY tutorial and note I found on the topic assumed id_rsa and id_rsa.pub like it's the first and only SSH key. Thank you for this.
For gists I had to add a wildcard prefix: Host *.github.com
use this command to add this cd ~/.ssh/ nano config Host github.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_rsa Save and exit the file by pressing Ctrl + X, then Y, and finally Enter.
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73

You need to generate an SSH key (if you don't have one) and associate the public key with your Github account. See Github's own documentation.

4 Comments

Thanks for this...I got an SSH key now generated from GitHub. What command is used to associate the two in the terminal now? Thanks!
There is no terminal command for that. See step 4 in the documentation that I linked in my answer.
I cloned the repository by using HTTPS. Do I need to generate SSH key in this case?
@PabitraDash No. HTTPS does not use SSH keys.
73

This happened to me. For some reason my origin got messed up without my realizing it:

Check if your settings are still correct

git remote -v 

the url needs to be something like ssh://[email protected]/YourDirectory/YourProject.git; if you don't see [email protected], use

git remote set-url origin git://github.com/YourDirectory/YourProject.git 

to set it right. Or you could use the github app to check and set the Primary Remote Repository url in the settings panel of your particular repository.

2 Comments

Be careful with the urls. They differ between https and ssh and the posts on this page don't make it that clear. Each git project has a .git/config file in the project root directory. There you can set the remote and branch information. Setting the remote for https: url = github.com/<yourGitUserName>/<yourGitProject>.git While for git+ssh: url = [email protected]:<yourGitUserName>/<yourGitProject>.git Having the wrong url causes the public-key permission denied error which is probably not a very clear error.
for my case in the final just works with in the part: git remote set-url origin github.com/your_directory/your_project.git
50

Issue solved if you change the ssh access to https access to the remote repository:

git remote set-url origin https_link_to_repository git push -u origin master 

1 Comment

i get "fatal: No such remote 'origin'" for this
37

Assuming you are connecting GitHub over SSH, you can run below command to confirm this.

$git config --get remote.origin.url 

If you get a result has following format [email protected]:xxx/xxx.github.com.git, then you should do the following.

Generate a SSH key(or use existing one). if you had one, you just need to add your key to the ssh-agent (step 2)and to your GitHub account(step 3).

below are for those who don't have SSH key.

Step 1 Generating public/private rsa key pair.

$ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]" 

You'll be asked to confirm where to save the SSH key and what passphrase you want to use.

Step 2 Add your key to the ssh-agent

  • Ensure ssh-agent is enabled

    $eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

  • Add your SSH key to the ssh-agent:

    $ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Step 3 Add your SSH key to your account

$sudo apt-get install xclip

$xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Then add the copied key to GitHub

Go to Settings->SSH keys(Personal settings side bar)->Add SSH key->fill out form(key is on your clipboard, just use ctrl+v)->Add key

After going through above steps, you should solve the permission problem.

Reference Link: Generating SSH keys.

2 Comments

This solution worked on ubuntu, $ssh-add /root/.ssh/id_rsa
This resolved a weird messup on my enviornment too, one modification I would suggest is to avoid the xclip dependancy, just use cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
33

Another solution :

create the SSH keys, type ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]". This will create both id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files.

Add the id_rsa to ssh list on local computer: ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

After generating the keys get the pubkey using :

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 

you will get something like :

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAACAQCvMzmFEUPvaA1AFEBH6zGIF3N6pVE2SJv9V1MHgEwk4C7xovdk7Lr4LDoqEcqxgeJftwWQWWVrWWf7q9qCdHTAanH2Q5vx5nZjLB+B7saksehVOPWDR/MOSpVcr5bwIjf8dc8u5S8h24uBlguGkX+4lFJ+zwhiuwJlhykMvs5py1gD2hy+hvOs1Y17JPWhVVesGV3tlmtbfVolEiv9KShgkk3Hq56fyl+QmPzX1jya4TIC3k55FTzwRWBd+IpblbrGlrIBS6hvpHQpgUs47nSHLEHTn0Xmn6Q== [email protected] 

copy this key (value) and go to github.com and under the setting (ssh and pgp key) add your public key.

Comments

24

this worked for me:

1- remove all origins

git remote rm origin 

(cf. https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-remote.html)

*remote : "Manage the set of repositories ("remotes") whose branches you track.

*rm : "Remove the remote named . All remote-tracking branches and configuration settings for the remote are removed."

2- check all has been removed :

git remote -v 

3- add new origin master

git remote add origin [email protected]:YOUR-GIT/YOUR-REPO.git 

that's all folks!

1 Comment

That was helpful.By these commands it start asking me for github username and account password, after that I can easily push to github link by type in terminal: git push -u origin master
23

First, we need to check for existing ssh keys on your computer. Open up Terminal and run:

ls -al ~/.ssh #or cd ~/.ssh ls 

and that will lists the files in your .ssh directory

And finally depending on what you see (in my case was):

 github_rsa github_rsa.pub known_hosts 

Just try setting up your RSA and hopefully that will solve your "git push origin" issues

$ ssh-keygen -lf ~/.ssh/github_rsa.pub

NOTE: RSA certificates are keys-paired so you will have a private and a public certificate, private will not be accessible for you since it belongs to github (in this case) but the public is the one you might be missing when this error happens (at least that was my case, my github account or repo got messed up somehow and i had to "link" the public key, previously generated)

5 Comments

Do I have to copy the SHA output to github from this command?
No, just execute "ssh-keygen -lf ~/.ssh/<YOUR_GITHUB_RSA_FILE.pub>"
that's why i also attached a command that "Lists the files in your .ssh directory"... so that way you know from which file to extract your key (ssh-keygen). Remember RSA certificates are keys-paired so you will have a private and a public certificate, private will not be accessible for you since it belongs to github (in this case) but the public is the one you might be missing when this error happens (at least that was my case, my github account or repo got messed up somehow and i had to "link" the public key, previously generated, again)
$ ssh-keygen -lf ~/.ssh/github_rsa.pub /home/mona/.ssh/github_rsa.pub: No such file or directory
"No such file or directory" means you dont have that file name or path... what do you get when when execute ls -al ~/.ssh?
21

If you having issues to make connection with your enterprise Github account then follow the below steps

Solution #1

ERROR: [email protected]: Permission denied (public key). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights 

Solution (OSX)

  • Open your terminal and follow below commands

  • $ cd ~

  • $ sudo su

  • $ ssh-keygen

    • Enter file in which to save the key (/var/root/.ssh/id_rsa): $ id_rsa
    • Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): $ hit enter
    • Enter same passphrase again: $ hit enter
  • $ cd ~/.ssh

  • $ cat id_rsa.pub

  • copy display content. enter image description here

  • Open GitHub click your profile icon settings>SSH and GPC Keys

  • Click on the new ssh key button enter image description here

  • enter any title and key that you copied enter image description here

  • check now your issue is resolved

Solution #2

ERROR 2: remote: Password authentication is not available for Git operations. remote: You must use a personal access token or SSH key. remote: See https://github.compnay.com/settings/tokens or https://github.compnay.com/settings/ssh fatal: unable to access 'https://github.company.com/repo/app.git/': The requested URL returned an error: 403 

Support for password authentication was removed on August 13, 2021. Please use a personal access token instead.

https://namespaceit.com/blog/remote-support-for-password-authentication-was-removed-on-august-13-2021-please-use-a-personal-access-token-instead

5 Comments

It asks sudo password before pushing to remote. How do we remove that?
@rohetoric - Not sure try with "allow write access" property in the GitHub repo.
Solved my access denied problem and can use git without sudo. Thanks a lot!
You should add ssh after register key into github. ssh-add ~/.ssh/sshfiles
Solved my issue. Thanks buddy.
16

I was getting this error. Turns out I had just upgraded OSX to Sierra and my old key was no longer registered.

At first I thought it was "Upgrading to macOS Sierra will break your SSH keys and lock you out of your own servers"

But I had sidestepped that one. Turns out I just had to re-register my existing key:

ssh-add -K

And type the passphrase... done!

1 Comment

same issue, worked for me: ` ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa `
14

Yes I too had this question :/ I was going to push my project to Github in HTTP type(not in SSH type). I had to enter my username and password in each push. So first I entered code relevant to below type

git remote add origin [email protected]:YOUR-GIT/YOUR-REPO.git 

and I got

[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

So however I solved my problems by doing below methods

  1. git remote rm origin remove your git remote repository
  2. git remote now check whether your remote remote repository have been removed

URL = https://github.com/<username>/<repository>.git

  1. git remote add origin URL Again add your URL to make remote repository
  2. git push -u origin master
    You can push your content to remote repository. In here as you use "-u" with the command you make a tracking branch and with the help of tracking branch in the remote repository you won't to tell git what branch you push in the next steps :)
    And here if you use linux git will ask username and password before push the content. And give your relevant credentials.

For prevent to give username and password in each push you have to change git config

For list your git config - git config --global --list
you will see

user.name=<your_username> user.email=<your_email> 

So you have to add credential.helper attribute to your git config to this

5.git config --global --add credential.helper store add this to your terminal Now you can add new item to your files then git add., git commit -m "<message>", git push
And now too there git will request your username and password and that will be the last time. And for next git pushes git won't request username and password from you :)

Comments

13

I think i have the best answer for you, your git apps read your id_rsa.pub in root user directory

/home/root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 

That's why your key in /home/your_username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub can't be read by git. So you need to create the key in /home/root/.ssh/

$ sudo su $ ssh-keygen $ cd ~/.ssh $ cat id_rsa.pub 

Then copy the key in your github account. It's worked for me. You can try it.

1 Comment

This let me to the answer I was looking for. I ran clone with sudo from habit, so it was looking for the wrong credentials. Took off the sudo and my clone ran fine.
11

Make sure ssh-add -l shows a fingerprint of an SSH key that's present in the list of SSH keys in your Github account.

If the output is empty, but you know you have a private SSH key that works with your github account, run ssh-add on this key (found in ~/.ssh. It's named id_rsa by default, so you'll likely run ssh-add id_rsa).

Else, follow these instructions to generate an SSH key pair .

Comments

10

In case you are not accessing your own repository, or cloning inside a cloned repository (using some "git submodule... " commands):

In the home directory of your repository:

$ ls -a 

1. Open ".gitmodules", and you will find something like this:

[submodule "XXX"] path = XXX url = [email protected]:YYY/XXX.git 

Change the last line to be the HTTPS of the repository you need to pull:

[submodule "XXX"] path = XXX https://github.com/YYY/XXX.git 

Save ".gitmodules", and run the command for submodules, and ".git" will be updated.

2. Open ".git", go to "config" file, and you will find something like this:

[core] repositoryformatversion = 0 filemode = true bare = false logallrefupdates = true ignorecase = true precomposeunicode = true [remote "origin"] url = https://github.com/YYY/XXX.git fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* [branch "master"] remote = origin merge = refs/heads/master [submodule "XXX"] url = [email protected]:YYY/XXX.git 

Change the last line to be the HTTPS of the repository you need to pull:

 url = https://github.com/YYY/XXX.git 

So, in this case, the main problem is simply with the url. HTTPS of any repository can be found now on top of the repository page.

Comments

9

I was using github earlier for one of my php project. While using github, I was using ssh instead of https. I had my machine set up like that and every time I used to commit and push the code, it would ask me my rsa key password.

After some days, I stopped working on the php project and forgot my rsa password. Recently, I started working on a java project and moved to bitbucket. Since, I had forgotten the password and there is no way to recover it I guess, I decided to use the https(recommended) protocol for the new project and got the same error asked in the question.

How I solved it?

  1. Ran this command to tell my git to use https instead of ssh:

    git config --global url."https://".insteadOf git:// 
  2. Remove any remote if any

    git remote rm origin 
  3. Redo everything from git init to git push and it works!

PS: I also un-installed ssh from my machine during the debug process thinking that, removing it will fix the problem. Yes I know!! :)

1 Comment

I don't think it's a good idea to point people toward https, when also ssh is supposed to work. Furthermore, this is unlikely to work for people behind a corporate proxy.
6

I had the same issue recently. This might help if you need a fix immediately, but this needs to be done every time you re-start your system

From terminal, run : ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Enter your system password and that should work.

Comments

6

OK there are few solutions to this one, some of them might already been mentioned but just to keep them together:

  • make sure you keys are present, by default another ~/.ssh/ folder, i.e. id.rsa and id.rsa.pub

  • make sure the keys have correct permissions, you can run chmod:

    chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa

    chmod 644 ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

  • make sure the content of you public key (id_rsa.pub) matches the one uploaded in the remote repository configuration

  • Finally fix the problems with ssh agent: ssh-add

Some more info: https://itcodehub.blogspot.com/2015/01/ssh-add-problems-with-ssh-agent-and.html

1 Comment

I had copied my ssh key from one computer to another using a USB drive formatted as FAT32. That changed the permissions of the files. On Ubuntu, I’m used to automatically being asked for the SSH password when needed, but that just silently did not happen until I ran chmod like you describe. Thanks.
6

Allow write access for the key (identity) and then click Add key

enter image description here

If on Windows check for more details in Using Github via SSH.

1 Comment

Where was this screenshot taken?
4

I would like to add some of my findings:

If you are using GitBash, then make sure the SSH key is stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

By Default GitBash searches for ~/.ssh/id_rsaas default path for SSH key.

Even the file name id_rsa matters. If you save your SSH key in another filename or path, it will throw the Permission Denied(publickey)error.

Comments

4

If you have already created an SSH key and are still getting the error it is because you need to give the user permissions to read and write to the folder you are cloning into. To do this, sudo chmod 777 <your_folder_name_here>". Of course, this is after you have generated an SSH key and you are still getting this error. Hope this helps future users.

Edit

To add on to this use admin in Windows if you're using the git bash

3 Comments

This. This can also cause the problem.
This was my problem, but I wouldn't recommend setting 777 permissions on a folder. In my case the folder was owned by the root user, and I needed to give it access to my non-root user account. I did this like so: sudo chown -R $USER:$USER <your_folder_name_here>
@David, I also recommend that as well. 777 is pretty hacky and not secure.
4

TLDR:

  1. make sure you have write access to the repo (configure it from the repo's settings).
  2. make sure the public key is in the SSH and GPG keys of your github account.

For me, this error usually occurs when I try to clone some repo from a newly installed machine. When receiving a request, github will first check the public key hash. If the public key does not match any user, github will reject this request. This case is common if the machine is new and your ssh key is newly generated.

4 Comments

Can you be more specific on point 1?
If the repo belongs to you, you will always be able to write to the repo. If the repo does not belong to you, ask the owner to add you to the collaborators.
If you are trying to clone a public repo, it is highly likely that your SSH key is not added to your github account.
My question was meant to ask where exactly in the repo’s settings write access is granted.
3

Also in ubuntu, even though there was already SSH key entered in settings in BitBucket, I got this problem. The reason was, I was trying the following:

sudo git push origin master 

Not sure why, but it got solved by using

git push origin master 

No sudo used.

1 Comment

It's because sudo won't be using the same keys as you've generated. Another good test is to try ssh -vT [email protected] and see what it says, this can confirm your ssh config is good to go.
3

I was having a similar problem to @Batman. However, because I was running this under /usr/local/src/projectname, running without sudo was not an option.

Just add the -E flag to preseve the environment (your ~/.ssh/ path).

$ sudo -E git clone git@your_repo

From man sudo:

-E, --preserve-env Indicates to the security policy that the user wishes to pre‐ serve their existing environment variables. The security policy may return an error if the user does not have permis‐ sion to preserve the environment.

1 Comment

this was the case for me, using -E solved the issue.
3

enter image description hereIf you are using Widows-10, follow this instruction. It works for me.

  1. Open terminal as administrator

  2. run this command: "ssh-keygen". It generate a ssh key and will show the folder where it has been created. Check my imageenter image description here

  3. copy the generated "ssh key"

  4. go to your github profile ---> settings --> Click SSH and GPH --> Click ""New SSH Key Button" and paste the "ssh key" and finally "clickthe add Button"

1 Comment

Awesome, I tried to find many solution, but this is straight forward and worked in one go.
3

In case somebody else needs this. I created an ssh key with a different name like ar-2022-ssh in the user's .ssh folder. The problem with this is that Checking for existing SSH keys specifies that supported public keys for GitHub are one of the following.

id_rsa.pub id_ecdsa.pub id_ed25519.pub 

Once I changed my ssh key name to one of those when generating a key, it worked connecting to GitHub

1 Comment

This was a life saver, thank you @Keniboi
3

I faced the same problem.

[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists.

You can track these steps if using the linux:

1. Check for existing SSH keys:

ls -al ~//.ssh/

2. Generate a new SSH key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "<your_email_address>"

3. Add your SSH key to ssh agent:

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

4. Add your public SSH key to your GitHub account:

cat < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Now you are able to push again.

Comments

2

you can use Https url to login

i guess you are trying to login with ssh url when you say git push if it as asking only password consider you are connecting through ssh.better you use http url.

Comments

2

For me I tried this -

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" 

then I run

ssh-add ~/.ssh/path-to-the-keyfile 

and for generating the key you can run

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]" 

this will generate the pair of keys (Public and private).

you can store this key to github for more read this Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account

I hope it will help others :)

Comments

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