85

This question is related to my problem in understanding rebase, branch and merge, and to the problem

How can you commit to your github account as you have a teamMate in your remote list?

I found out that other people have had the same problem. The problem seems to be related to /etc/xinet.d/.

Problem: unable to push my local branch to my master branch at Github

I run

git push origin master

I get 

fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

The error message suggests me that the branch 'origin' is not in my local git repository. This way, Git stops connecting to Github.

This is strange, since I have not removed the branch 'origin'.

My git tree is

 dev * master ticgit remotes/Math/Math remotes/Math/master remotes/origin/master remotes/Masi/master

How can you push your local branch to Github, while you have a teamMate's branch in your local Git?

VonC's answer solves the main problem. I put a passphares to my ssh keys.

I run 

$git push github master

I get

Permission denied (publickey). fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

It seems that I need to give the passphrase for Git somehow.

How can you make Github ask for your passphrase rather than relying on the ssh key?

Improve this question
4
  • Just updated my answer. Ssh parameters are not all. user.name and github.user are important too Commented May 28, 2009 at 20:15
  • Updated my answer again, with some more ssh configuration checks Commented May 29, 2009 at 4:08
  • "Permission denied (publickey)." actually means that you tried to login using your publickey, and permission was denied, rather than not being allowed access to your publickey. Commented Oct 6, 2009 at 22:38
  • My problem was a different ssh key from a different system. I uploaded the other key and all was fine. I found it out with the ssh -v [email protected] trick. Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 14:30

9 Answers 9

Reset to default
98

What does

$ git config --get-regexp '^(remote|branch)\.'

returns (executed within your git repository) ?

Origin is just a default naming convention for referring to a remote Git repository.

If it does not refer to GitHub (but rather a path to your teammate repository, path which may no longer be valid or available), just add another origin, like in this Bloggitation entry

$ git remote add origin2 [email protected]:myLogin/myProject.git $ git push origin2 master

(I would actually use the name 'github' rather than 'origin' or 'origin2')

Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Check if your gitHub identity is correctly declared in your local Git repository, as mentioned in the GitHub Help guide. (both user.name and github.name -- and github.token)

Then, stonean blog suggests (as does Marcio Garcia):

$ cd ~/.ssh $ ssh-add id_rsa

Aral Balkan adds: create a config file

The solution was to create a config file under ~/.ssh/ as outlined at the bottom of the OS X section of this page.

Here's the file I added, as per the instructions on the page, and my pushes started working again:

Host github.com User git Port 22 Hostname github.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa TCPKeepAlive yes IdentitiesOnly yes

You can also post the result of

ssh -v [email protected]

to have more information as to why GitHub ssh connection rejects you.

Check also you did enter correctly your public key (it needs to end with '==').
Do not paste your private key, but your public one. A public key would look something like:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3<big string here>== [email protected]

(Note: did you use a passphrase for your ssh keys ? It would be easier without a passphrase)

Check also the url used when pushing ([email protected]/..., not git://github.com/...)

Check that you do have a SSH Agent to use and cache your key.

Try this:

 $ ssh -i path/to/public/key [email protected]

If that works, then it means your key is not being sent to GitHub by your ssh client.

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

5 Comments

too bad i can't vote you more than once! I had this problem twice in two weeks and after i google it each time i found this SO post. THANKS! :)
I was wrestling with this - I'd changed all the git config, but ssh-add was the step I was missing - thanks so much!
It was just a tiny suggestion in the context of this great answer - but I love the bit about renaming "Origin" to "GitHub" (or servername) it really helps with conceptualizing where you're sending things.
This worked for me too. If you follow the instructions on github it's not immediately obvious what origin is.
help.github.com/win-set-up-git follow to the end - it helped me. Permission denied (publickey). - means you did set up a ssh key for you git on you local machine. ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]"
28

This is a problem with your remote. When you do git push origin master, origin is the remote and master is the branch you're pushing.

When you do this:

git remote

I bet the list does not include origin. To re-add the origin remote: 

git remote add origin [email protected]:your_github_username/your_github_app.git

Or, if it exists but is formatted incorrectly:

git remote rm origin git remote add origin [email protected]:your_github_username/your_github_app.git
Improve this answer

Comments

10

VonC's answer is best, but the part that worked for me was super simple and is kind of buried among a lot of other possible answers. If you are like me, you ran into this issue while running a "getting started with rails" tutorial and you had NOT setup your public/private SSH keys.

If so, try this:

  1. $>cd ~/.ssh

  2. $>ls

  3. If the output of ls is known_hosts and nothing else, visit: http://help.github.com/mac-key-setup/ and start following the instructions from the "Generating a key" section and down.

After running those instructions, my "git push origin master" command worked.

Improve this answer

2 Comments

i was just looking for this page. thans a lot! =D
It solved my problem. My OS is Mac OS X, and I was following "Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial" book, and I got stuck at section 1.3.4 when I needed to do a git push origin master. It was my first time setting up Git and Rails. Hopefully, this helped other people.
4

I have the same problem and i think the firewall is blocking the git protocol. So in the end I have to resort to using https:// to fetch and push. However this will always prompt the user to enter the password...

here is the example what working for me (just to share with those cant use git:// protocol :) 

git fetch https://[user-name]@github.com/[user-name]/[project].git

if the above works, you can remove the origin and replace with 

git remote rm origin git remote add origin https://[user-name]@github.com/[user-name]/[project].git
Improve this answer

3 Comments

You can use the ~/.netrc file store the password for you if you want. It's used by curl, which is what git uses for HTTP(S) transfers, in case you need to look up the specifics of how to use it.
@Arrowmaster: note that if you are on Windows, you need to use ~/_netrc ('_', not '.')
This worked for me. Thanks. I wonder if this is a bug or not.
1

I think that's another case of git error messages being misleading. Usually when I've seen that error it's due to ssh problems. Did you add your public ssh key to your github account?

Edit: Also, the xinet.d forum post is referring to running the git-daemon as a service so that people could pull from your system. It's not necessary to run git-daemon to push to github.

Improve this answer

2 Comments

I added my public key to my github account. -- The problem started after I added a remote branch to my Git.
I created a new ssh key-pair. I pasted the new key to Github and removed the old one from Github. The same problem persists.
1

I got the same problem and I just added the content of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to my account in GitHub. After that just try again git push origin master, it should work.

Improve this answer

Comments

0

They key thing to remember is 'origin' is not the value you may need to be using... it worked for me when I replaced 'origin' with repo's name.

Improve this answer

Comments

0

One possibility that the above answers don't address is that you may not have an ssh access from your shell. That is, you may be in a network (some college networks do this) where ssh service is blocked.In that case you will not only be able to get github services but also any other ssh services. You can test if this is the problem by trying to use any other ssh service.This was the case with me.

Improve this answer

Comments

0

I had this problem and tried various solutions to solve it including many of those listed above (config file, debug ssh etc). In the end, I resolved it by including the -u switch in the git push, per the github instructions when creating a new repository onsite - Github new Repository

Improve this answer

Comments

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.