Git not working with remote server - windows-7

I have git installed and working as expected on my local system or a network share, but have not been able to get it to access the remote bare repository on my server using ssh.
I have installed msysgit and CopSSH on the server and msysgit, putty and tortoisegit on my local system. I am able to open a putty session or use plink successfully -- at least I believe plink is successful, but more on that in a bit.
When I attempt to clone a remote repository I get this:
D:\Temp> git clone uname#server:e:/path/test.git Test
Cloning into Test...
fatal: protocol error: bad line length character: Micr
The error message has been consistent for a while, but at times (from one reinstall attempt to another) the last four characters will be 'Micr', 'Allo' or something else I don't remember right now. In the currently installed state it is 'Micr'.
So the big question is what am I not doing right?
Although I imagine it would be much easier to correct what was wrong if I could get the actual error message instead of the generic one followed by the first four characters of the actual error message. Any idea if that is possible?

First, you have variables like export GIT_TRACE=1 and export GIT_TRACE_PACKET=1 which can help debugging this kind of situation.
Second, this error is often caused by any kind of display done during the ssh session (see for instance this thread), like a .bashrc on the server side with an echo in it.
I have a wrapper set-up around ssh that sets the window title of the shell to the ssh command argument. That is what messes things up!
See also Git FAQ
Other causes include:
using the right ssh
correctly forcing to use git-shell
using --exec-path from the server_arg on the server side
Note: with Git 2.6+ (Q3 2015), see also "GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE".

Related

Windows, Git and the SSH url/path of a bare repository

I am trying to set up a git repository on our Windows server.
I installed OpenSSH for Windows and Git for Windows.
The OpenSSH server runs on port 2345 to filter out generic bots.
I created a bare and shared repository on C:\git\protocolrepo.git
I couldn't reach it with the URL:
ssh://User#domain#server.com:2345:C:/git/protocol.git
It seems to me to be a malformed URL but everywhere I look on the web I get this, but it just doesn't work.
As I found out in this thread: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/895, the shell might be the cause, so I set the powershell as the default shell of OpenSSH.
This didn't work either and I still needed to use this oddly formed URL.
So I installed Cygwin and set the Cygwin bash as the default shell, and used a more appropriately formed url:
ssh://User#domain#server.com:2345/cygdrive/c/git/protocol.git
I had a little bit more success with this, but it now states the following error message:
fatal: '/cygdrive/c/git/protocol.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.
The access rights should be fine as I make use of the same user alltogether, but I'm not 100% sure how this works on Windows.
I'm not sure either how Git/ssh handles this path on Windows.
On a Linux based server this worked just fine with /git/protocol.git path.
Pushing a new branch to a bare repository is something I haven't done in a while either so that also might be done wrong here, but I can't recall it to be an issue.
What would you recommend to debug this issue?
I would start by checking if an interactive SSH session works, before considering using a Git repo SSH URL.
ssh -p 2345 User#domain#server.com
If it does, try and access /C/git/protocol.git in that interactive shell.
If that works, then try for your git commands the URL
ssh://User#domain#server.com:2345/C/git/protocol.git
# or
ssh://User#domain#server.com:2345/c/git/protocol.git

Need help setting up a git server on windows

i'm trying to set up a git server on Windows, but i'm having some issues getting it all to work.
I have locally created a normal repository, and remotely i created a bare repository. On the local repository i added a single text file and committed it, but when I try to push it into the remote repository I always get the following message:
fatal: protocol error: bad line length character: fata
I searched SO and other sources, and most of them suggest it's an issue regarding command echos. I'm using freeSSHd as a SSH solution (remote repository is hosted on a windows server), and I tried to use both the git bash and the windows CMD as a command shell.
I start CMD with /Q to disable echoing and /K to change directory to a directory where repositories are located, so I don't think that would be a problem.
Using the remote desktop, i can clone the repository to a folder next to it, and using the git bash locally i can access the SSH shell and also clone the repository in the same way. But using git clone ssh://<address>:/myRepo.git I always get the above message (The SSH's working folder is the same where the repository is located). Does anyone have any idea what's going on? How can I see what command is triggering the error, and how can I see the full error message?
I also met the same error using freeSSHd as a ssh solution for git server on Windows. I couldn't find a solution for a whole day and gave up. :(
Later I found another powerful ssh server from Bitvise called WinSSHD worked well. It has free version for personal use. I suggest you to switch to it. Though I'd also like to know if there's a fix to the error we both met.
To setup ssh server with WinSSHD is quite simple, and you can add virtual accounts with private/public key access.
The key part is to setup the ssh access for git server. Please follow the steps of the blog here.
It should work well for Windows git client. For Mac, you may meet an error as follows.
grp.sh: No such file or directory
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
To fix it, you need to create the two files gup.sh and grp.sh in your git bin directory (GIT_PATH/bin or GIT_PATH/libexec/git-core configured in system environment variable PATH) in your git server.
The content of gup.sh:
git-upload-pack.exe $*
The content of grp.sh:
git-receive-pack.exe $*

Git remote end hung up unexpectedly

I am trying to set up a git repo on my test server when I try to push from my windows computer
git push ssh://git#server.com:/path/.git
I get the error
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
But when I ssh'd into my server and tried to do the the exact same command it worked just fine. Is this a problem with my git setup or with my windows setup
The problem might be caused by a number of issues:
Git is installed in some weird place on the server, and the environment that "git" user gets when being logged in interactively (you do this by hand via PuTTY or whatever) differs from the environment it gets when being logged in non-interactively (the git client does this for you). This is because Unix shells read different startup files in these cases, and when git uses SSH to spawn remote git instance it still spawns the default (for the user) shell on the server.
You have a local problem (say, you configured Git to use plink.exe to access the server, and it asks you to accept the host's key by entering "y" or "n" (which you can't do).
In any case, try these steps:
Run plink.exe git#server.com "git --version" and see it's able to run Git on the server at all. If you don't use plink.exe use whatever binary is shipped with OpenSSH included with Git for Windows; probably it's ssh.exe.
Export GIT_TRACE=1 before running git push and see if it prints out anything hinting at what went wrong, like this:
C:\foo>GIT_TRACE=1
C:\foo>git push ssh://git#server.com:/path/.git
I suspect the problem is that the user 'git' does not have write access to the remote repository, and that you may be connecting manually with your own username (cemurray, or some such).

Git push command not working with msysgit setup

I installed GIT onto my windows 2k8 server following these directions: http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/wiki/HOWTO_CentralServerWindowsXP
All commands work fine except the "push" command. I get this error:
git.exe push -v "origin" master:master
git: '/path/to/repo' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.
Pushing to user#ipaddress/path/to/repo
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
Does anyone know how to fix this?
It looks like the remote origin is not set up correctly.
I recommend re-creating that remote, either by renaming it or deleting it and making a new one:
git remote rename origin origin_backup
git remote add origin ssh://user:pass#address/path/to/repo.git
Then try again, preferably with a fetch before you push.
What protocol are you using? If git://, then make sure there is a Git daemon listening for connections. If ssh://, make sure you have ssh access and write permission on the appropriate directory tree.
Another possibility is that the server and client are running different versions of Git. It could cause problems if one is running a version that expects commands in the format git cmd and the other expects git-cmd.
First check, if your plain SSH access to 5.16.217.81 is working: is
ssh 5.16.217.81
able to open a connection to the host?
If that is successful, ensure that you specify the path to your repo in a way your SSH server understands. In the HowTo, the path is specified different from the path you typed:
5.16.217.81/d/private/test/ (your path) vs.
<server>:d:/DeeDriveRepos/Repo2
Obviously, the CopSSH server wants colons to separate the drive letter from the host, so that your URL should be 5.16.217.81:d:/private/test/.
If you used Cygwin, your URL would be 5.16.217.81/cygdrive/d/private/test/
My pushes work for msysgit version 1.6.5 but not for 1.7.x

Cannot get git extensions to push something to github SSH problems

Im trying to use git extensions and I really like it so far, but I don't manage to push to github. The following command works fine in git bash:
git push "origin" master:master
and then when I push with git extensions I get this:
C:\Program Files\Git\bin\git.exe push "origin" master:master
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
Done
In the git settings it just has openSSH selected which I would like to keep because putty seems more hassle.
The remote addres I have added in gitextensions, actually the only thing I have done from the bash just to test is the command above and gerenating the SSH keys. All else is set up in git extensions. So I suppose everything must be set up correctly. Eg, the email adress and name are correct...
ssh git#github.com
also connects fine, from bash
edit:
So I can reproduce the error by putting the command from git-extensions in cmd. Appearantly there is a difference between running from git bash and from cmd and git-extensions runs this command like a windows command... any clues?
update:
If I choose git-bash from the menu in git-extensions I get a window that is exactly the same as when I right click in explorer on my repo folder and choose git bash here. Now, in the one opened from explorer I can push and in the one opened from extensions I get the public key problem.
Things to check for:
Presence of HOME environment variable.
Presence of %HOME%\.ssh\ and RSA keys there.
When you run git from command promt it is preferred to run git.cmd, because it fixes HOME automatically:
#if not exist "%HOME%" #set HOME=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
#if not exist "%HOME%" #set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
To fix gitextensions, define HOME variable and set it to same value as USERPROFILE
Ok, I solved it.
I opened the git bash from git extensions and a git bash using the explorer shell extensions. I then ran ssh -vvv git#github.com from both to see the difference.
It turned out that because I changed the location of the git config file ( I tend to reformat every now and then, so c:\documents and settings... is notoriously bad for storing anything I might want to keep persistent), when run from git extensions git was also looking for the ssh keys in a different location. So I added the .ssh folder where my git cofig file is and now it works fine. I think git-extensions sets the HOME variable for git to whatever you set as path for the config file.
Now, that was not obvious...
The correct answer is the one from 'max' (set your HOME env var manually), but it may help some to understand why the problem is happening (as Git gets more users around the world it's going to be very common).
Cygwin sets $HOME to /home/yourname, but that variable is not known in the Windows environment. So if you open a bash window and do env | grep HOME you'll see all three 'HOME' variables mentioned here, and you might wonder why Gitextensions doesn't use your proper cygwin HOME - which is because its .bat file invocation doesn't see it - it only sees what you see from doing 'set' in a windows console.
It's mystifying why it doesn't do this evaluation later and get the proper cygwin path since it knows how to invoke bash, but (at least in versions up to 2.41) you have to do this manual change in the settings or in .gitconfig.
When you fire up git bash directly you'll land in your home folder for MSYS. You need to make sure you have your ssh key (id_rsa ?) in the .ssh subfolder (relative to the home folder).
Glad you solved the problem. Since this sounds like a serious problem I'm interested in the difference between git-bash when started from GitExtensions. In GitExtensions there is a setting that might fix this. The %HOME% directory can be changed in GitExtensios. By default it will be set to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%, but you can override this. Changing this probably solves your problem, since you suggest this is the problem. To change this open the settings dialog and go to the tab "git". In the section "Environment" you can set the %HOME% path.
I will appreciate it if you let me know if this also solves the problem. I'm also interested in what caused this in the first place. Maybe I can improve the check for a valid HOME directory.
Yes, not setting the HOME varible was the issue for me too.
Set the HOME variable as %USERPROFILE% and regenerate the Private and Public keys, then try cloning—it should work now.
I see that the HOME variable is set to USERPROFILE in git extensions. I can add and commit but not push/pull from the remote repository. I am unable to connect to any remote repository. We use http (not ssh) for the connection. However, using git bash I am able to connect to the remote and do push/pull. I had put my issue GIT extensions does not connect to remote but git bash does and was directed to this issue. However, I am unable to resolve my issue. Any ideas?

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