[git] Git error: "Host Key Verification Failed" when connecting to remote repository

I am trying to connect to a remote Git repository that resides on my web server and clone it to my machine.

I am using the following format for my command:

git clone ssh://[email protected]/repository.git

This has worked fine for most of my team members. Usually after running this command Git will prompt for the user's password, and then run the cloning. However, when running on one of my machines I get the following error:

Host key verification failed.

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

We are not using SSH keys to connect to this repository, so I'm not sure why Git is checking for one on this particular machine.

I got the same problem on a newly installed system, but this was a udev problem. There was no /dev/tty node, so I had to do:

mknod -m 666 /dev/tty c 5 0

The solutions mentioned here are great, the only missing point is, what if your public and private key file names are different than the default ones?

Create a file called "config" under ~/.ssh and add the following contents

Host github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_id_rsa

Replace github_id_rsa with your private key file.

As I answered previously in Cloning git repo causes error - Host key verification failed. fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly, add the GitHub to the list of authorized hosts:

ssh-keyscan -t rsa github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Its means your remote host key was changed (May be host password change),

Your terminal suggested to execute this command as root user

$ ssh-keygen -f "/root/.ssh/known_hosts" -R [www.website.net]

You have to remove that host name from hosts list on your pc/server. Copy that suggested command and execute as a root user.

$ sudo su                                                        // Login as a root user

$ ssh-keygen -f "/root/.ssh/known_hosts" -R [www.website.net]    // Terminal suggested command execute here
Host [www.website.net]:4231 found: line 16 type ECDSA
/root/.ssh/known_hosts updated.
Original contents retained as /root/.ssh/known_hosts.old

$ exit                                                           // Exist from root user

Try Again, Hope this works.

If you are in office intranet (otherwise dangerous) which is always protected by firewalls simply have the following lines in your ~/.ssh/config.

Host *
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

When the remote server wants to connect to the private repo, it would authenticate via ssh. Create the private-public key pair with ssh-keygen or if you already have the public-private key. copy&paste the public key in the Settings of the private repo.

YourPrivateRepo -> Settings -> Deploy Keys -> Add deploy key -> Paste the public key.

Now the remote server would be able to connect to the private repo.

NOTE: The deploy keys has access only for reading the repo. Need to explicitly allow write access.

I had the similar issue, unfortunately I used the GitExtensions HMI and forgot that I wrote a passphrase. With HMI.... forget it ! Do not enter passphrase when you generate your key !

If you are using git for Windows.

• Open the git GUI.
• Open the local git repository in git GUI.
• Add the remote or push if the remote already exists.
• Answer "yes" to the question about whether you want to continue.

The GUI client adds the key for you to ~/.ssh/known_hosts. This is easier to remember if you don't do it often and also avoids the need to use the git command line (the standard Windows command lines don't have the ssh-keyscan executable.

For me, I just had to type "yes" at the prompt which asks "Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?" rather than just pressing Enter.

You kan use https instead of ssh for git clone or git pull or git push

ex:

git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git

You can use your "git url" in 'https" URL format in the Jenkinsfile or wherever you want.

git url: 'https://github.com/jglick/simple-maven-project-with-tests.git'

Reason seems to be that the public key of the remote host is not stored or different from the stored one. (Be aware of security issues, see Greg Bacon's answer for details.)

I was used to git clone prompting me in this case:

The authenticity of host 'host.net (10.0.0.42)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is 00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Not sure, why this error is thrown instead. Could be the configuration of your shell or the git SSH command.
Anyhow, you can get the same prompt by running ssh [email protected].

I had the similar issue, but, using SSH keys. From Tupy's answer, above, I figured out that the issue is with known_hosts file not being present or github.com not being present in the list of known hosts. Here are the steps I followed to resolve it -

1. mkdir -p ~/.ssh
2. ssh-keyscan -t rsa github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
3. ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "user.email"
4. open the public key with this command $ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and copy it.
5. Add the id_rsa.pub key to SSH keys list on your GitHub profile.

I was facing the same error inside DockerFile during build time while the image was public. I did little modification in Dockerfile.

 RUN git clone  https://github.com/kacole2/express-node-mongo-skeleton.git /www/nodejs

This would be because using the [email protected]:... syntax ends up > using SSH to clone, and inside the container, your private key is not > available. You'll want to use RUN git clone > https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka.git instead.

This is happening because github is not currently in your known hosts.

You should be prompted to add github to your known hosts. If this hasn't happened, you can run ssh -T [email protected] to receive the prompt again.

When asked:

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Type yes as the response

That is how I solved my issue. But if you try to just hit the enter button, it won't work!

I got this message when I tried to git clone a repo that was not mine. The fix was to fork and then clone.

What worked for me was to first add my SSH key of the new computer, I followed these instructions from GitLab - add SSH key. Note that since I'm on Win10, I had to do all these commands in Git Bash on Windows (it didn't work in regular DOS cmd Shell).

Then again in Git Bash, I had to do a git clone of the repo that I had problems with, and in my case I had to clone it to a different name since I already had it locally and didn't want to lose my commits. For example

git clone ssh://git@gitServerUrl/myRepo.git myRepo2

Then I got the prompt to add it to known hosts list, the question might be this one:

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

I typed "yes" and it finally worked, you should typically get a message similar to this:

Warning: Permanently added '[your repo link]' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.

Note: if you are on Windows, make sure that you use Git Bash for all the commands, this did not work in regular cmd shell or powershell, I really had to do this in Git Bash.

Lastly I deleted the second clone repo (myRepo2 in the example) and went back to my first repo and I could finally do all the Git stuff like normal in my favorite editor VSCode.