I heard from GitHub Two-Factor Authentication](https://github.com/blog/1614-two-factor-authentication) nearly a couple of days ago when I was reading my RSS feed. I enabled it and couldn' push to any of my repositories anymore. Learn in this blog post how to fix it.
"Is a process involving two stages to verify the identity of an entity trying to access services in a computer or in a network". Github solves this authentication with sending an SMS to a device which wants to push to their platform.
- Go to your Account Settings.
- Set up two-factor authentication.
- You'll be given the option of setting up 2FA either through a text message, or through an app you can download onto your smartphone.
Once you type in the number on your github page, your account is verified.
Since you have enabled 2FA, you can create a personal access token.
- Go into your Account Settings.
- Click on Applications - this is where you can find the a section where you can create your "Personal Access Token"
- Save the password in some encrypted file.
Run:
$ curl -u <token>:x-oauth-basic https://api.github.com/user
If everythings works fine then you should get following json output:
{
"login": "matthias-guenther",
"id": 264708,
"avatar_url": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/264708?",
"gravatar_id": "9172bb642e29e9959f078f329308faa1",
"url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther",
"html_url": "https://github.com/matthias-guenther",
"followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/followers",
"following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/following{/other_user}",
"gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/gists{/gist_id}",
"starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
"subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/subscriptions",
"organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/orgs",
"repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/repos",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/events{/privacy}",
"received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/matthias-guenther/received_events",
"type": "User",
"site_admin": false,
"name": "Matthias Günther",
"company": "",
"blog": "http://wikimatze.de/about.html",
"location": "Berlin",
"email": "matthias@wikimatze.de",
"hireable": true,
"bio": "software developer, writer, hiker, jogger, and mobile apps lover",
"public_repos": 64,
"public_gists": 11,
"followers": 54,
"following": 65,
"created_at": "2010-05-04T16:46:36Z",
"updated_at": "2014-03-26T04:43:54Z",
"private_gists": 0,
"total_private_repos": 0,
"owned_private_repos": 0,
"disk_usage": 57682,
"collaborators": 0,
"plan": {
"name": "free",
"space": 307200,
"collaborators": 0,
"private_repos": 0
}
}
If something went wrong, you should get a message like the following:
{
"message": "Not Found",
"documentation_url": "http://developer.github.com/v3"
}
I had all my repositories checked out via HTTPS. But after enabling 2FA, you can't push to this repositories anymore.
$ git remote -v
origin https://github.com/matthias-guenther/wikimatze.de.git (fetch)
origin https://github.com/matthias-guenther/wikimatze.de.git (push)
$ git push origin master
fatal: 'git@github.com/matthias-guenther/wikimatze.de.git' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
I tried every combination of passwords, personal access token and even created a new ssh-key, but it won't work. I had
to change the remote URL to git@github.com:matthias-guenther/wikimatze.de.git
and it worked.
I'm the maintainer of vimberlin.de and pushing my changes with the git@*
remote URL hack did
not work out very well:
$ git remote -v
origin git@github.com/vimberlin/vimberlin.de.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com/vimberlin/vimberlin.de.git (push)
$ git push
fatal: 'git@github.com/vimberlin/vimberlin.de.git' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Most posts out there advices to use osxkeychain to save your credentials. Since I'm using Xubuntu for developing I had to search after another method.
The .netrc
file contains login and initialization information for managing the auto-login process.
All you have to do is to setup your crdentials in ~/.netrc
:
machine github.com
login matthias-guenther
password <token>
protocol https
machine gist.github.com
login matthias-guenther
password <token>
protocol https
Where <token>
is your personal access token. It would be silly to save your password in plain text.
I assume that you already have your gpg
key, you need to run the following command:
$ gpg --encrypt --armor --recipient matthias.guenther@wikimatze.de .netrc
And update the credentials helper:
$ git config --global credential.helper "netrc -f ~/.netrc.asc -v"
Now you can push again.