Can't clone a github repo on Linux via HTTPS

Question

I\'m trying to do a simple git clone https://github.com/org/project.git on a CentOS box but get:

error: The requested URL returned error:

Answer 1

I was able to get a git 1.7.1 to work after quite some time.

First, I had to do disable SSL just so I could pull:

git config --global http.sslverify false

Then I could clone

git clone https://github.com/USERNAME/PROJECTNAME.git

Then after adding and committing i was UNABLE to push back. So i did

git remote -v

origin  https://github.com/USERNAME/PROJECTNAME.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/USERNAME/PROJECTNAME.git (push)

to see the pull and push adresses:

These must be modified with USERNAME@

git remote set-url origin https://USERNAME@github.com/USERNAME/PROJECTNAME.git

It will still prompt you for a password, which you could add with

USERNAME:PASSWORD@github.....

But dont do that, as you save your password in cleartext for easy theft.

I had to do this combination since I could not get SSH to work due to firewall limitations.

Answer 2

The answer was simple but not obvious:

Instead of:

git clone https://github.com/org/project.git

do:

git clone https://username@github.com/org/project.git

or (insecure)

git clone https://username:password@github.com/org/project.git

(Note that in the later case, your password will may be visible by other users on your machine by running ps u -u $you and will appear cleartext in your shell's history by default)

All 3 ways work on my Mac, but only the last 2 worked on the remote Linux box. (Thinking back on this, it's probably because I had a global git username set up on my Mac, whereas on the remote box I did not? That might have been the case, but the lack of prompt for a username tripped me up... )

Haven't seen this documented anywhere, so here it is.

Answer 3

I had the same problem and error. In my case it was the https_proxy not set. Setting the https_proxy environment variable fixed the issue.

$ export https_proxy=https://<porxy_addres>:<proxy_port>

Example:

$ export https_proxy=https://my.proxy.company.com:8000

Hope this help somebody.