CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitssh
Aaron Vanstralen
Aaron Vanstralen

Reputation:

"Access denied" when pushing to remote repository via SSH

I am a newbie with Git and seem to have a problem with pushing to a repository over a network.
Here is what I do to recreate the problem:

  1. create a new Git repository on the computer to push to

    mkdir ~/git/test.git
cd !$
git --bare init

  2. On my local computer I then create a new Git repository and add a random file to it:

    mkdir test
git init
touch TEST
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

  3. Then add the remote computer via: git remote add origin ssh://[email protected]/~/git/test.git

  4. Then I try to push the local repository to the remote via: git push origin master

This is what I get when I do that:

fatal: protocol error: bad line length character  <- sometimes not there
Access denied
Access denied
Access denied
Access denied
FATAL ERROR: Server sent disconnect message
type 2 (protocol error):
"Too many authentication failures for user"

I am using cygwin on an XP machine and trying to push to a unix server.

I have also tried it between my two computers I have at home and I have the same problem, both are windows machines by the way.

I have set up passwordless login via SSH and I can ssh no problem via: ssh [email protected]

I've been trying to figure this out for two days now, any help would be appreciated

Upvotes: 2

Views: 22672

Answers (6)

Denis
Denis

Reputation: 453

One more key to solve such a problem. In our case the reason was gitolite.conf file with repositiories and permissions. Someone have edited it with Windows Notepad which added BOM header to it. After this repositiory had very weird behavior when some users could but some could not write to it getting access denied messages.

Upvotes: 0

James Andres
James Andres

Reputation: 1532

I was having a similar issue, but the solution turned out a little different for my situation. The error message I was getting was:

$> git push -v unfuddle master
Pushing to [email protected]:subdomain/repo.git
Received disconnect from 174.129.246.239: 2: Too many authentication failures for git
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

I couldn't figure out what the problem was, ssh -vv didn't show anything either. I already had this text in my ~/.ssh/config

Host subdomain.unfuddle.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/unfuddle-subdomain-key

The issue turned out to be that Unfuddle's SSH server is configured to deny access after a certain number of SSH keys are tried. Even though I had a specific IdentityFile set my SSH client was, for unknown reasons, trying all of my local SSH keys in sequence until Unfuddle denied access. The solution was to set the SSH "IdentitiesOnly" config option to "yes" which tell the local SSH client to only send just that one IdentityFile and no others.

# The fixed ~/.ssh/config line
Host subdomain.unfuddle.com
    User git
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/unfuddle-subdomain-key

Ref: http://railspikes.com/2010/2/1/fixing-the-heroku-too-many-authentication-failures-for-git-problem

Hopefully this helps someone.

James

Upvotes: 2

Thomas Leonard
Thomas Leonard

Reputation: 7196

In your case the problem is probably the ~ character. Use:

  git remote add origin [email protected]/git/test.git

However, I've also seen this problem (always on Windows client machines) when the username ("user@") part was missing, so anyone else with this problem should check that too.

Upvotes: 0

Ikke
Ikke

Reputation: 101231

Try to use

ssh://[email protected]:/home/user/git/test.git

Upvotes: 1

oyvindio
oyvindio

Reputation: 797

The issue is probably that ~ won't expand correctly when using it in a ssh URI. You would need to specify the absolute path to the git repository on the remote machine in the ssh URI, like this:

ssh://[email protected]/home/user/git/test.git

Upvotes: 6

Norman Ramsey
Norman Ramsey

Reputation: 202505

I'm not sure about your access problems, but the path in

git remote add origin ssh://[email protected]/~/git/test.git

worries me. What do you get with

git remote add origin ssh://[email protected]/git/test.git

?

Also please show output from git push -v ...

Upvotes: 0

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