Git's famous "ERROR: Permission to .git denied to user"

After Googling for few days, I found this is the only question similar to my situation.

However, I just solved the problem! So I am putting my answer here to help anyone else searching for this issue.

Here is what I did:

Open "Keychain Access.app" (You can find it in Spotlight or LaunchPad) Select "All items" in Category Search "git" Delete every old & strange item Try to Push again and it just WORKED

If problem is coming on windows then remove the Credentials from the Windows history.

Go to Credential Manager

Go to Windows Credentials

Delete the entries under Generic Credentials

Try connecting again.This time , it should prompt you for the correct username and password.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/5KePZ.png

remove credentials from git

In step 18, I assume you mean ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa? If so, that explains this:

I also suspect some local ssh caching weirdness because if i mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa KAKA and mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub POOPOO, and do ssh git@github.com -v, it still Authenticates me and says it serves my /home/meder/.ssh/id_rsa when I renamed it?! It has to be cached?!

... since the ssh-agent is caching your key.

If you look on GitHub, there is a mederot account. Are you sure that this is nothing to do with you? GitHub shouldn't allow the same SSH public key to be added to two accounts, since when you are using the git@github.com:... URLs it's identifying the user based on the SSH key. (That this shouldn't be allowed is confirmed here.)

So, I suspect (in decreasing order of likelihood) that one of the following is the case:

You created the mederot account previously and added your SSH key to it. Someone else has obtained a copy of your public key and added it to the mederot GitHub account. There's a horrible bug in GitHub.

If 1 isn't the case then I would report this to GitHub, so they can check about 2 or 3.

More :

ssh-add -l check if there is more than one identify exists if yes, remove it by ssh-add -d "that key file"

On Mac, if you have multiple GitHub logins and are not using SSH, force the correct login by using:

git remote set-url origin https://username@github.com/username/repo-name.git

This also works if you're having issues pushing to a private repository.

Its due to a conflict.

Clear all keys from ssh-agent

ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/id_rsa
ssh-add -d ~/.ssh/github

Add the github ssh key

ssh-add   ~/.ssh/github

It should work now.

I am using Mac and the issue is solved by deleting github record from keychain access app: Here is what i did:

Open "Keychain Access.app" (You can find it in Spotlight orLaunchPad) Select "All items" in Category Search "git" Delete every old & strange items Try to Push again and it just WORKED

Above steps are copied from @spyar for the ease.

I find the solution is the same as @spyar provide which is the Keychain Access app stored the old username.

There are 2 solutions for this situation:

Delete the info in Keychain Access by Open Keychain Access app Search for GitHub Delete corresponding credentials

Or

If you want to use ssh key. You just change your Repo url from https https://github.com/username/repo.git into git@github.com:username/repo.git

I recently ran into this issue for on old repo on my machine that had been pushed up using https. steps 5 and 6 solved my issue by re-setting the remote url for my repo from using the https url to the ssh url

checking the remote is using the https url

> git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (push)

then re-setting the origin to use the ssh url

> git remote set-url origin git@github.com:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git

verifying new remote

> git remote -v
origin  git@github.com:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (fetch)
origin  git@github.com:ExampleUser/ExampleRepo.git (push)

could now successfully git push -u origin

i'm still not sure what setting i would have changed that might have caused the push to fail when the remote is https but this was the solution to my issue

I had the same problem as you. After a long time spent Googling, I found out my error was caused by multiple users that had added the same key in their accounts.

So, here is my solution: delete the wrong-user's ssh-key (I can do it because the wrong-user is also my account). If the wrong-user isn't your account, you may need to change your ssh-key, but I don't think this gonna happen.

And I think your problem may be caused by a mistyping error in your accounts name.

I encountered this error when using Travis CI to deploy content, which involved pushing edits to a repository.

I eventually solved the issue by updating the GitHub personal access token associated with the Travis account with the public_repo scope access permission:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/01DDn.png

Same issue was observed when pushing to a respository:

$ git push --set-upstream origin new-operator-test
ERROR: Permission to redhat-openshift-ecosystem/redhat-marketplace-operators.git denied to cniackz.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

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

What was done is making sure you clone your forked repository:

git clone git@github.com:cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators.git
git checkout -b new-branch
<performed the changes>
git add <files>
git commit -m <files>

And it worked:

$ git push --set-upstream origin new-branch
Enumerating objects: 9, done.
Counting objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Delta compression using up to 10 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (7/7), 643 bytes | 643.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 7 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (2/2), completed with 2 local objects.
remote: 
remote: Create a pull request for 'new-branch' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators/pull/new/new-branch
remote: 
To github.com:cniackz/redhat-marketplace-operators.git
 * [new branch]      new-branch -> new-branch
Branch 'new-branch' set up to track remote branch 'new-branch' from 'origin'.

It is suspected that to start with, it was not used the forked repository but the one from redhat and this would explain the issue since cniackz user does not have access to that repository but to forked only.

I was running into similar issue on Mac OS.

Summary

Make sure the repo gets cloned with correct/intended username If you try to clone a repo without specifying GitHub username, it picks up the GitHub username already cached in the OSX's Keychain Access utility Hence I had to specify username while cloning the repo - git clone https://username@github.com/username/repository.git When it prompts to enter password, you may have to use a use a personal access token (PAT) because support for password authentication was removed on August 13, 2021 by GitHub. Here's some documentation around personal access tokens (PAT) and how to set up and use The initial push might also require specifying username git push https://username@github.com/username/repository.git and providing PAT as password On subsequent pushes, no password would be prompted as they get cached to OSX Keychain Access util. Also, I didn't have to use the full URL to push. Just git push worked fine

More details about my set up/situation/issue

Essentially I was trying to work with two different GitHub (github.com) accounts (1. Work account/email & 2. Personal account/email)

Mine was a little peculiar case because I had an existing SSH key generated with my personal email when our organization was on premise before migrating our repos to public github.com and that key was also configured for Bastion AWS (Amazon Web Services). I couldn't regenerate a new key with the same email and also I did not generate a new key with work email which would have required to update the key configured for Bastion AWS

Note: My initial set up itself wasn't correct because at that time I didn't have much knowledge about how to work with or use SSH keys, so I realized I set them up incorrectly

Following approach worked for me (Note that this is a work around). I fell back to using GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) instead.

git clone https://username@github.com/username/repository.git

Prompted password, I entered my PAT here (which then got cached to OSX Keychain Access)

And then

git push https://username@github.com/username/repository.git

On my subsequent pushes, no password prompts and I didn't have to use the full URL to push. Just git push <origin/remote/upstream> <branch> worked fine

This problem is also caused by:

If you are on a mac/linux, and are using 'ControlMaster' in your ~/.ssh/config, there may be some ssh control master processes running.

To find them, run:

ps aux | grep '\[mux\]'

And kill the relevant ones.

I too ran into this, what caused this for me is that while cloning the repo I was pushing my changes to, I picked up the clone URL from an incognito tab without signing in. (I am still clueless on how it effects). That for some reason led to git picking another user account. When i tried it again from a proper signed in page it worked like usual for me.

I also happen to come across this issue while working on my MAC So, the problem is this. I had once logged in from one of my old GitHub account. Now, I am using a different GitHub account. I solved using the below steps-

Open "Keychain Access.app" Select "All items" in Category Search "Github" Open that entry, and change the Account to new github username.

Try to Push again and it will work

Steps that help me:

Deleted all the existing PATs on github and created a new one. Make sure to check the repo section when creating a new PAT. Following is image from github as example: For me this step was the source for the error, since I followed the above step 1 correctly. Update you github password in your local machine windows or mac

That's all I think.