Git push requires username and password

Question

I cloned a Git repository from my GitHub account to my PC.

I want to work with both my PC and laptop, but with one GitHub account.

When I try to push to or p

Answer 1

You need to perform two steps -

1. git remote remove origin
2. git remote add origin git@github.com:NuggetAI/nugget.git

Notice the Git URL is a SSH URL and not an HTTPS URL... Which you can select from here:

Answer 2

For the uninitiated who are confused by the previous answers, you can do:

git remote -v

Which will respond with something like

origin    https://yourname@github.com/yourname/yourrepo.git (fetch)
origin    https://yourname@github.com/yourname/yourrepo.git (push)

Then you can run the command many other have suggested, but now you know yourname and yourrepo from above, so you can just cut and paste yourname/yourrepo.git from the above into:

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:yourname/yourrepo.git

Answer 3

You can cache your GitHub password in Git:

Just follow the instructions from GitHub's official documentation.

After following the instructions from the above link, you should be able to push/pull to/from your repository without typing your username/password every time.

Answer 4

If you're using SSH and your private key is encrypted with a passphrase, then you'll still be prompted to enter the passphrase/password for the private key when you do network operations with Git like push, pull, and fetch.

Use ssh-agent to save the private key passphrase/password credentials

If you want to avoid having to enter your passphrase every time, you can use ssh-agent to store your private key passphrase credentials once per terminal session, as I explain in my answer to Could not open a connection to your authentication agent:

$ eval `ssh-agent -s`
$ ssh-add

In a Windows msysgit Bash, you need to evaluate the output of ssh-agent, but I'm not sure if you need to do the same in other development environments and operating systems.

ssh-add looks for a private key in your home .ssh folder called id_rsa, which is the default name, but you can pass a filepath to a key with a different name.

Killing the agent

When you're done with your terminal session, you can shutdown ssh-agent with the kill flag -k:

$ ssh-agent -k

As explained in the ssh-agent manual:

-k

Kill the current agent (given by the SSH_AGENT_PID environment variable).

Optional timeout

Also, it can take an optional timeout parameter like so:

$ ssh-add -t <timeout>

where <timeout> is of the format <n>h for <n> hours, <n>m for <n> minutes, and so on.

According to the ssh-agent manual:

-t life

Set a default value for the maximum lifetime of identities added to the agent. The lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format specified in sshd_config(5). A lifetime specified for an identity with ssh-add(1) overrides this value. Without this option the default maximum lifetime is forever.

See this page for more time formats.

Security warning for Cygwin users

Cygwin users should be aware of a potential security risk with using ssh-agent in Cygwin:

people should be cognizant of the potential dangers of ssh-agent under Cygwin 1, though under a local netstat and remote portscan it does not appear that the port specified in /tmp/ssh-foo is accessible to anyone ...?

[1]: http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-01/msg00063.html

And at the cited link:

however, note that Cygwin's Unix domain sockets are FUNDAMENTALLY INSECURE and so I strongly DISCOURAGE usage of ssh-agent under Cygwin.

when you run ssh-agent under Cygwin it creates AF_UNIX socket in /tmp/ssh-$USERNAME/ directory. Under Cygwin AF_UNIX sockets are emulated via AF_INET sockets. You can easily see that if you'll look into /tmp/ssh-$USERNAME/agent-socket-* file via Notepad. You'll see something like

!<socket >2080

then run netstat -a and surprise! You have some program listening to port 2080. It's ssh-agent. When ssh receives an RSA challenge from the server, it refers to corresponding /tmp/ssh-$USERNAME/agent-socket-* (under Cygwin, in our case, that means it'll open connection to localhost:2080) and asks ssh-agent to process the RSA challenge with the private key it has, and then it simply passes the response received from the ssh-agent to the server.

Under Unix, such a scenario works without problems, because the Unix kernel checks permissions when the program tries to access an AF_UNIX socket. For AF_INET sockets, however, connections are anonymous (read "insecure"). Imagine, that you have the Cygwin ssh-agent running. A malicious hacker may portscan your box, locate open port used by ssh-agent, open a connection to your SSH server, receive the RSA challenge from it, send it to your ssh-agent via an open port he/she found, receive the RSA response, send it to the SSH server and voila, he/she successfully logged in to your server as you.

Answer 5

When you use https for Git pull & push, just configure remote.origin.url for your project, to avoid input username (or/and password) every time you push.

How to configure remote.origin.url:

URL format:
    https://{username:password@}github.com/{owner}/{repo}

Parameters in URL:

* username 

    Optional, the username to use when needed. 
 authentication,
    if specified, no need to enter username again when need authentication.
    Don't use email; use your username that has no "@", otherwise the URL can't be parsed correctly,
* password
    optional, the password to use when need authentication.
    If specified, there isn't any need to enter the password again when needing authentication.
    Tip:
        this value is stored as plain text, so for security concerns, don't specify this parameter,
*

e.g
    git config remote.origin.url https://eric@github.com/eric/myproject

---

@Update - using ssh

I think using ssh protocol is a better solution than https, even though the setup step is a little more complex.

Rough steps:

• Create ssh keys using command, e.g ssh-keygen on Linux, on windows msysgit provide similar commands.
• Keep the private key on the local machine at a proper location, e.g., ~/.ssh. And add it to the ssh agent via ssh-add command.
• Upload the public key to the Git server.
• Change remote.origin.url of the Git repository to ssh style, e.g., git@gitlab.com:myaccount/myrepo.git
• Then when pull or push, there isn't any need to enter the username or password ever.

Tips:

• If your ssh key has a passphrase, then you need to input it on first use of the key after each restart of your machine, by default.

---

@Update - Switch between https and ssh protocol.

Simply changing remote.origin.url will be enough, or you can edit repo_home/.git/config directly to change the value (e.g using vi on Linux).

Usually I add a line for each protocol, and comment out one of them using #.

E.g.

[remote "origin"]
        url = git@gitlab.com:myaccount/myrepo.git
        # url = https://myaccount@gitlab.com/myaccount/myrepo.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Answer 6

This is what worked for me:

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

Example:

git remote set-url origin https://jsmith@github.com/jsmith/master.git