git: fatal: Could not read from remote repository

Question

I am trying to set git up with http://danielmiessler.com/study/git/#website to manage my site.

I have gotten to the last step in the instructions: git push website +master:refs/heads/master

I am working using the git ming32 command line in win7

$ git push website +master:refs/heads/master
Bill@***.com's password:
Connection closed by 198.91.80.3
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

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

One problem here may be that the program is looking for Bill@***.com. when I connect via ssh to my site I have a different username( lets say 'abc'). so maybe this should be abc@***.com. If so I don't know how to change this or if I can push under an alias

Answer 1

You can specify the username that SSH should send to the remote system as part of your remote's URL. Put the username, followed by an @, before the remote hostname.

git remote set-url website abc@***.com:path/to/repo

Answer 2

Your ssh key most likely had been removed from ssh agent

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

where id_rsa is a ssh key associated with git repo

Update

You may get Could not open a connection to your authentication agent. error to resolve that you need to start the agent first by:

eval `ssh-agent -s`

Answer 3

I was facing same issue a while ago...

my .git/config had

url = [e-mail]:manishnakar/polymer-demo.git

I replaced it with

url = https://github.com/manishnakar/polymer-demo.git 

and it works now:)

Answer 4

Make sure you have correct url in .git/config

url = [e-mail]:username/repo.git

If it's your first push, you'll need to set up correct upstream

$ git push -u origin master

You can check which key is used by:

$ ssh -vvv [e-mail]

The reply should contain something like this:

debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: ~/.ssh/id_rsa
...
You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Also it's possible to define rules for ssh in ~/.ssh/config, e.g. based on aliases:

   Host github
      HostName github.com 
      User git
      IdentityFile "~/.ssh/id_rsa"

   Host git
      HostName github.com 
      User git
      IdentityFile "~/.ssh/some_other_id"

You can set connect to different ports, use different username etc. for each alias.

Answer 5

Try removing the GIT_SSH environment variable with unset GIT_SSH. This was the cause of my problem.

Answer 6

This is usually caused due to the SSH key is not matching with the remote.

Solutions:

1. Go to terminal and type the following command (Mac, Linux) replace with your email id.

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[e-mail]"

2. Copy the generated key using following command starting from word ssh.

   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

3. Paste it in github, bitbucket or gitlab respective of your remote.
4. Save it.

Answer 7

Make sure ssh-agent is running by executing the following command on your terminal:

eval $(ssh-agent -s)

Source: Github documentation

Answer 8

I had the same problem.

This error means that you have not specified your remote URL location upon which your code will push.

You can set remote URL by 2 (mainly) ways:

1. Specify remote URL via executing command on Git Bash.

   • Navigate to your project directory

   • Open Git Bash

   • Execute command:

     • git remote set-url origin <https://abc.xyz/USERNAME/REPOSITORY.git>

2. Mention remote URL direct in config file

   • Navigate to your project directory

   • Move to .git folder

   • Open config file in text editor

   • Copy and paste below lines

     • [remote "origin"] url = https://abc.xyz/USERNAME/REPOSITORY.git fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

For more detailed info visit this link.

Answer 9

I had a wrong ssh private key for Bitbucket along with the right one in ssh agent.

Deleted all keys first

ssh-add -D

Then added just the right key.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Answer 10

After doing some research I've finally got solution for this, you have declared a environment variable to plink.exe path. So if you remove that path, reopen the git bash and try cloning through SSH it will work.

Refer to this link

http://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/2959/#204c

Answer 11

I had the same error. The solution was following: I've corrected my url in .git/config. Just copied that from HTTPS clone URL. That would be something like that:

url = https://github.com/*your*git*name*/*your*git*app*.git

It worked.

Answer 12

Another workaround:

Sometimes this happens to me because of network problems. I don't understand the root problem fully, but switching to a different sub-network or using VPN solves it

Answer 13

If after"git push origin master" command u see the error "could not read from remote repository" then try this out

1.ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "youremail"
2.eval $(ssh-agent -s)
3.ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
4.clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub(it copies the ssh key that has got generated)
5.then go to your remote repository on github and goto settings-> SSH and GPG keys ->new SSH key ->enter any title and paste the copied SSH key and save it
6. now give git push origin master 

Answer 14

In your .git/config file

[remote "YOUR_APP_NAME"]
    url = [e-mail]:YOUR_APP_NAME.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/YOUR_APP_NAME/*

And simply

git push YOUR_APP_NAME master:master 

Answer 15

If you use Gitlab than you might need to log in and accept Gitlab new terms, before you try to pull or push.

Answer 16

In my case I was using an ssh key with a password to authenticate with github. I hadn't set up pageant properly in Windows (only in cygwin). The missing steps were to point the git_ssh environment variable to plink.exe. Also, you need to get github.com into the plink known_hosts.

   plink github.com
   y
   <then ctrl-c>

Hope this helps!

I sure wish intellij would have given me a more useful error, or better yet asked me to type in the ssh key password.

Answer 17

For my case, I am using Corporate network (without internet connection) in office. In order to pull code from github, I set https proxy in gitbash and then use https instead of ssh to pull code,it works fine. However when comes to push code, the https proxy won't work. So either switch to Internet network (with internet connection) or set ssh proxy can solve the problem.

Answer 18

Actually I tried a lot of things to make it work on Win7, since changing the SSH exectun fron native to build-it and backwards and the same error. By chance, i change it to HTTPS in the ".git/config" file as:

[remote "origin"]
        url = https://github.com/user_name/repository_name.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

and it finally worked. So maybe it could work for you as well.

Answer 19

I had the same issue and after a while I saw I'm under root user (with sudo -s). May this help for someone.

Answer 20

I had a perfectly fine working git and suddenly I got that error when I tried to push to the master. As I found out, it was because the repository host had problems.

If you using GitHub or Bitbucket you can easily check the status at

https://status.github.com/messages or https://status.bitbucket.org/

Answer 21

I solved this issue by restarting the terminal (open a new window/tab).

So if you don't really want/need to understand the underlying problem, test method is worth a try before digging deeper :)

Answer 22

You need to use HTTPS for Git:

Type this into the Terminal:

$ git remote set-url origin abc@***.com:path/to/httpURLRepo

Then commit:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "This is the commit message"

Answer 23

updated OCT 2020

In most of the case when you have more than one user access the same git server from a same client system, that time git server confused to with access key with the user both users allowed but when you fire command that time its used default user.

ssh -T [e-mail]

see which user are activatly you try to push with that user

the simple solution removes the unused user public key from the git server.

then try to git fetch or pull, push it will work for me

Answer 24

I meet the problem just now and fix it by: git config user.email "youremail".

---

update: The root cause maybe my poor network and poor proxy. I still don't know why it happened, but every time has this error, this command works!!!

Answer 25

In my case it was the postBuffer..

git config --global http.postBuffer 524288000

For reference read: https://gist.github.com/marcusoftnet/1177936

Answer 26

I had the same error, which brought me to this answer that didn't help me. I was trying to create a new "bare" repository for the first time using the commands below to track to an NTFS location:

cd myrepository
git init --bare \\myserver.mycompany.local\myrepository.git
git init
git status
git add .
git status
git commit -m "Initial Commit"
git remote add origin \\myserver.mycompany.local\myrepository.git
git push -u origin master
git status

My problem turned out to be using the back slashes instead of forward slashes in the NTFS location when trying to add origin to set the (new) tracked upstream branch.

I had to remove the origin using:

git remote rm origin

Then add the origin again using the expected forward slashes

git remote add origin //myserver.mycompany.local/myrepository.git

Hope this helps someone in the future.

Answer 27

I've got this error after changing computers. I'm using SourceTree with Bitbucket.

So I had to add the SSH key generated by SourceTree, on the new computer, in Bitbucket Settings > Security > SSH keys, while connected to my Bitbucket account on the web.

Answer 28

user@server:/etc/nginx$ cat .git/config 
...
[remote "origin"]
    url = [e-mail]:user/.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
...

---

1. Use ssh instead of https.
2. To use ssh key in git (add ssh key).
3. If you are root, use the ssh key.

---

$ sudo ssh-keygen
$ cat /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 

$ git init
$ git add file
$ git commit -m "add first file"
$ git remote add origin [e-mail]:user/example.git 
$ git push -u origin master

Answer 29

I was getting this problem intermittently, where most of the time it would not give the error message. The solution for me was to configure LDAP correctly after my LDAP server's IP address had changed.

The /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb configuration for LDAP was pointing to a non-existent IP address, and so changing the host to point to the proper hostname for the LDAP server fixed the issue.

To diagnose the issue, use the gitlab-ctl tail command to help you find stacktraces. For me, I found this stacktrace:

==> /var/log/gitlab/gitlab-rails/production.log <==

Net::LDAP::Error (No route to host - connect(2) for 10.10.10.12:389):
  /opt/gitlab/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/net-ldap-0.16.0/lib/net/ldap/connection.rb:72:in `open_connection'
...

Make the changes to the host value in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

gitlab_rails['ldap_servers'] = YAML.load <<-'EOS'
   main: 
     label: 'My LDAP'
     # this was an IP address
     # host: '10.10.10.12'
     host: 'internal-ldap-server' # this is the fix
     port: 389

After changing the config file above, be sure to reconfigure gitlab

gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Answer 30

I had this problem using gitbash on windows 10. I tried several things to solve this problem, the major ones being these:

1. Recreated my ssh keys and updated to bitbucket. Didn't help
2. Turned on debugging using this and found out that I was getting "shell request failed on channel 0" as asked here
3. Rebooted my windows PC

None of the above helped. I ended up re-installing Git for windows This took only a few minutes as compared to other things I did and it solved the problem!