git - 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: 401 while accessing https://github.com/org/project.git/info/refs

fatal: HTTP request failed

It never prompts me for my username/password, just fails.

I can make the exact same call on my Mac no problem- what am I missing?

Answer 1

The answer was simple but not obvious:

Instead of:

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

do:

git clone https://[email protected]/org/project.git

or (insecure)

git clone https://username:[email protected]/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.