Ssh – git pull: Permission denied (publickey)

authenticationgitssh

So I am trying to get git to work with my repo server (1.2.3.4) (debian) on my new server on AWS (4.5.6.7 / 10.0.0.111).

My repo's .git/config

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
[branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master
[remote "origin"]
    url = git@1.2.3.4:/opt/git/repo.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

I'm getting this error:

[ec2-user@ip-10-0-0-111 html]$ sudo git pull
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

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

My public key is present in /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys

I previously I was prompted for the password for the user git on my repo server (not my key file passphrase). I then disabled password auth for the git user, and received the permission denied instead. During this time and now with the error above I was able to successfully login via ssh:

ssh git@1.2.3.4

With no password prompt or such:

debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 279
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).

A successful ssh login on the repo server (1.2.3.4) looks like this in the /var/log/auth.log:

Feb 22 15:45:44 hostname sshd[20142]: Connection from 4.5.6.7 port 50409
Feb 22 15:45:44 hostname sshd[20142]: Found matching RSA key: <fingerprint>
Feb 22 15:45:44 hostname sshd[20142]: Accepted publickey for git from 4.5.6.7 port 50409 ssh2
Feb 22 15:45:44 hostname sshd[20142]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user git by (uid=0)

When I try git pull this is what auth.log looks like:

Feb 22 15:46:41 hostname sshd[20177]: Connection from 4.5.6.7 port 50410

Then nothing more.

How can I debug the git ssh authentication failure for git when the normal ssh command works perfectly?

Best Answer

You do git pull under sudo, which is the problem. Doing only

git pull

will work for you. Also doing

sudo ssh git@1.2.3.4

will fail for you. The problem is that sudo changes user and it does no longer see your identity file /home/ec2-user/.ssh/id_rsa (it searches in /root/.ssh/id_rsa). Do the pull with your normal user or copy/move your key to appropriate location for the target user (root).

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