Git SSH public key authentication failed with git on Azure DevOps

Question

I am trying to push a git repo from PowerShell into an Azure DevOps repo, and I keep getting different auth errors when trying to push it.

I am hoping somebody can shed some light on what I check, and do a proper walkthrough.

E.g.,

git remote add origin [email protected]:v3/MyAzure/MyProject/MyRepo
git push -u origin --all

I keep getting:

[email protected]'s password:

I've input all sorts of passwords, but it's still failing. Which password is it talking about?

Alternatively, I've also gotten:

Permission denied, please try again.

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

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

Verification:

$ ssh -T [email protected]
ssh: connect to host mycompany.com  port 22: Connection refused

I have done the following:

• Created a repo in Azure DevOps
• Created a SSH key using git-bash, as per Microsoft's documentation, copied and pasted without spaces into Azure DevOps security.
• Gone to my profile/security and added an SSH key (generated in git-bash)

Am I missing the obvious? Is it better to use personal access token? Can anyone provide a walk through of the correct steps?

Answer 1

This worked for me

adding a config file in ~/.ssh/

and adding these lines

Host ssh.dev.azure.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my_ssh_private_key
IdentitiesOnly yes

This link by @wcoder helped

Answer 2

I believe @Schalton's comment is right: SSH validation is failing, so it prompts for the pass.

Had the same problem. "Solved it" by generating the key as the default value ('id_rsa') instead of using other names (tried other names and none of them worked).

[####@#### .ssh]$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/guille/.ssh/id_rsa): id_rsa
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in id_rsa.pub.

EDIT: As noted by @LHM the value default (no input needed) for the file in which to save the key is showed in parenthesis.

Answer 3

Before this I had already tried the other answers, but nothing worked. At last, this article had the solution for me in Fedora.

Running ssh with the -v switch (ssh -v -T [email protected]) revealed this error:

debug1: send_pubkey_test: no mutual signature algorithm

Workaround is to add this line to the client configuration file (~/.ssh/config):

PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +rsa-sha2-256,rsa-sha2-512

Answer 4

TL;DR: It turns out the path and filename shown in parenthesis (e.g./home/guille/.ssh/id_rsa) is a default value that can be accepted simply by leaving it blank and hitting Enter.

---

Extended Answer: I, too, had the same problem. I made the same mistake as @eltbus (attempting to name the file something myself), so his answer of sticking to the default of "id_rsa" was helpful to me. I also realized that when I generated the rsa key pair, I saved id_rsa.pub to the wrong folder. (Only entering id_rsa without a leading file path, can save it to a different folder.)

You can avoid both of my above mistakes if you simply hit Enter to accept the default file name and location, instead of typing in a path and/or file name.

Example:

[####@#### .ssh]$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/guille/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in id_rsa.pub.

Answer 5

I realize this question mentions powershell. However, with the title and tags people on other OS's may end up here, and there is a common problem with Azure Devops access from mac and linux.

To fix this for mac and linux, add IdentitiesOnly yes to ~/.ssh/config

This is a common problem for Azure Devops. Unfortunately I'm not certain why this fixes it.

Answer 6

I have the same problem.

My solution was:

The path while I try to use sudo git clone... doesn't have permission to access my public and private key location: \home\localuser\.ssh\....

To solve this, I change ownership of the destination path to the same user:group ware my keys are stored and avoid to use sudo git clone...., now im using git clone without sudo and everything works.

I hope you understand...

Answer 7

Sign into your Azure DevOps. Go to Repos > Files, then click Clone. Finally, under the HTTPS tab, click Generate Git Credentials.

Answer 8

I saw my repo ssh URL which was different from my DevOps URL in my case what worked was adding the config file in my ~/.ssh folder with the following information:

Host vs-ssh.visualstudio.com <-- hostname found in my repo SSH URL
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_vsonline <-- your key name
    IdentitiesOnly yes

then tested it with

ssh -v vs-ssh.visualstudio.com

in the trace, I got something like

Authenticated to vs-ssh.visualstudio.com ([IP]:22).

Answer 9

When you paste in the key on the settings page of Azure DevOps don't change anything including the space appended at the end of the public key.

Answer 10

I followed the official permissions denied troubleshooting guide and it turned out, I had to re-generate the key after all. But I think it is best to follow the guide as it provides information on quite a few different scenarios that most of which are not mentioned here.

Answer 11

I tried every answer but with no success. It turned out it was as simple as putting the id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files in the .ssh folder under my user folder.

So by moving the files (id_rsa and id_rsa.pub) between the following locations it solved the problem and authentication succeded.

From:

C:\Users\My User\

To:

C:\Users\My User\.ssh\

Answer 12

I was using the GitHub recommended Ed25519 algorithm key which Azure DevOps doesn't support so I generated a standard key. The problem was I forgot to add the key:

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa