Git: How to solve Permission denied (publickey) error when using Git?

If the user has not generated a ssh public/private key pair set before

This info is working on theChaw but can be applied to all other git repositories which support SSH pubkey authentications. (See [gitolite][1], gitlab or github for example.)

First start by setting up your own public/private key pair set. Thiscan use either DSA or RSA, so basically any key you setup will work.On most systems you can use ssh-keygen.

• First you'll want to cd into your .ssh directory. Open up the terminal and run:

cd ~/.ssh && ssh-keygen

• Next you need to copy this to your clipboard.
• On OS X run: cat id_rsa.pub | pbcopy
• On Linux run: cat id_rsa.pub | xclip
• On Windows (via Cygwin/Git Bash) run: cat id_rsa.pub | clip
• On Windows (Powershell) run: Get-Content id_rsa.pub | Set-Clipboard (Thx to @orion elenzil)
• Add your key to your account via the website.
• Finally setup your .gitconfig.
• git config --global user.name "bob"
• git config --global user.email bob@...(don't forget to restart your command line to make sure the config is reloaded)

That's it you should be good to clone and checkout.

Further information can be found at https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys (thanks to @Lee Whitney)[1]: https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite

-

If the user has generated a ssh public/private key pair set before

• check which key have been authorized on your github or gitlab account settings
• determine which corresponding private key must be associated from your local computer

eval $(ssh-agent -s)

• define where the keys are located

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

More extensive troubleshooting and even automated fixing can be done with:

ssh -vT git@github.com

Alternatively, according to below comments, we could issue:

ssh -vT git@gitlab.com

or substitute gitlab/github with whatever Git Instance your organisation is running.

Source: https://help.github.com/articles/error-permission-denied-publickey/

This error can happen when you are accessing the SSH URL (Read/Write) instead of Git Read-Only URL but you have no write access to that repo.

Sometimes you just want to clone your own repo, e.g. deploy to a server. In this case you actually only need READ-ONLY access. But since that's your own repo, GitHub may display SSH URL if that's your preference. In this situation, if your remote host's public key is not in your GitHub SSH Keys, your access will be denied, which is expected to happen.

An equivalent case is when you try cloning someone else's repo to which you have no write access with SSH URL.

In a word, if your intent is to clone-only a repo, use HTTPS URL (https://github.com/{user_name}/{project_name}.git) instead of SSH URL (git@github.com:{user_name}/{project_name}.git), which avoids (unnecessary) public key validation.

Update: GitHub is displaying HTTPS as the default protocol now and this move can probably reduce possible misuse of SSH URLs.