[git] Cloning a private Github repo

I have a private repository on Github for a project I'm working on. Until now I had only worked on my home desktop, but I just bought a laptop, and am trying to set it up so that I can work on the project from either computer, and push / pull changes.

I added a new SSH key to my Github account for the laptop, and was successful in cloning and making changes to a public test repo that I set up. However, I couldn't clone the private repo. Is there anything special I need to do in the command line in order to clone a private repo? Do I need to set up a new GitHub account for my laptop and set myself up as a collaborator?

The command I used was git clone git://github.com/myusername/reponame.git

I was using Android Studio to clone the project from GitHub private repository and two-factor authentication (2FA). I created a personal token as made in lzl124631x's answer.

Then I cloned the repo using an url like this: https://YourGitHubUsername:[email protected]/YourRepoPath.git

I have a company (private) account and 2-Factor-Authentication enabled, so I had to combine a few posts to make it work as below. (Jotting down so it may be useful to someone with the same situation)

Initially it was the Fatal Error. 
fatal: repository 'https:
...
remote: Repository not found.
fatal: repository 'https:

Installed the credential manager and updated GIT as mentioned here: https://codeshare.co.uk/blog/how-to-solve-the-github-error-fatal-httprequestexception-encountered/

That did not solve the problem as the issue moved to the below when I tried using the clone command as follows:

$ git clone https://<username>:<password>@github.com/<ORG_NAME>/<PROJECT-NAME>.git

remote: Invalid username or password.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://

My password had $ symbol in it and for some reason GIT command line / GIT Bash did not like it. I can see this on the error returned text did not have the $ symbol in it.

fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://<username>:<password-missing-$-symbol>@github.com/<ORG_NAME>/<PROJECT-NAME>.git'

I had to reference this site: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Credential-Storage

Please note: If an incorrect password is stored for your account in Windows Credential Manager it will also add to the problem. I removed the github credential stored this way before moving to the step below.

$ git config --global credential.helper cache
$ git clone https://<username>:<password>@github.com/<ORG_NAME>/<PROJECT-NAME>.git

Now the Windows Credential manager popped-up. I typed my username and password in the text-boxes (This accepted my password that had the $ symbol) and prompted me for a 2-Factor Authentication code. I typed in the authentication code from Google Authenticator, and the clone started perfectly.

1) try running command with username and password in below format

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

now problem as others have mentioned here is when we have special character in our password. In Javascript use below code to convert password with special characters to UTF-8 encoding.

console.log(encodeURIComponent('password@$123'));

now use this generated password instead of one with special characters and run command.

Hope this solve issue.

This worked for me:

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

When cloning from private repos with 2FA enable, there is a simple steps which you need to follow

1. Go to your Git account
2. Go to Settings-> Developer Settings->Personal Access Token
3. Click on Generate new token
4. Create a token with title you want and with the functionalities
5. When you are cloning the private repo, by using git clone repoName, after entering your user name, give personal access token as the password.

Follow same steps when you get Authentication failed error message for Private repo

In response to mac's answer, you can get your SSH clone URL on your github repo page, by clicking SSH on You can clone with HTTPS, SSH, or Subversion. and copy the URL.

I have met this issue several times and every time I landed on this page, tried every thing and failed!

It's because I have 2FA enabled!!!

According to https://help.github.com/articles/which-remote-url-should-i-use/#when-2fa-is-enabled

If you have enabled two-factor authentication, or if you are accessing an organization that uses SAML single sign-on, you must provide a personal access token instead of entering your password for HTTPS Git.

1. Follow this link and create an access token
2. git clone https://github.com/username/repo_name.git (The default git repo link is good enough!)
3. Enter your username and use the access token as password!!

Update:

• If you don't mind exposing your access token in the command line, you can also paste the access token as username then hit enter enter (no need for password).
• Hate copy&pasting the access token over and over again?
  Use git config credential.helper store (don't do this on machine you don't trust)

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

When you are trying to use private repo from the repo at the time you need to pass username and password for that.

If you are sure that you don't have 2FA enabled, you have permission to access the repo, and the repo exists, it's possible that your [email protected] is logged in with another account.

to check that you can do

ssh -T [email protected]

If it shows another account, to resolve this issue:

 ssh-add -D
 ssh-add ~/.ssh/your_rsa
 ssh -T [email protected]
 git clone [email protected]:<owner_name>/<repo_name>.git

Cloning Private Repository using HTTPS in Year 2020

If maintainer of repository has given Developer access to you on his private library ,you need to first login to https://gitlab.com/users/sign_in with user for which you have received invitation,you will be prompted to change your password,once you change your password then you can successfully clone repository ,pull and push changes to it.

I think it also worth to mention that in case the SSH protocol can not be used for some reason and modifying a private repository http(s) URL to provide basic authentication credentials is not an option either, there's an alternative as well.

The basic authentication header can be configured using http.extraHeader git-config option:

git config --global --unset-all "http.https://github.com/.extraheader"
git config --global --add "http.https://github.com/.extraheader" \
          "AUTHORIZATION: Basic $(base64 <<< [access-token-string]:x-oauth-basic)"

Where [access-token-string] placeholder should be replaced (including square braces) with a generated real token value. You can read more about access tokens here and here.

If the configuration has been applied properly then the configured AUTHORIZATION header will be included in each HTTPS request to the github.com IP address accessed by git command.

In addition to MK Yung's answer: make sure you add the public key for wherever you're deploying to the deploy keys for the repo, if you don't want to receive a 403 Forbidden response.

I needed a non-interactive method for cloning a private repo.

Inspired by this issue: https://github.com/github/hub/issues/1644

Step 1.

Create a personal access token in the github developer settings: https://github.com/settings/tokens

Step 2.

git clone https://$token:[email protected]/$username/$repo.git

This worked for me:

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

This worked for me on mac git clone https://[email protected]:username/repo_name

If you want to achieve it in Dockerfile, below lines helps.

ARG git_personal_token
RUN git config --global url."https://${git_personal_token}:@github.com/".insteadOf "https://github.com/"
RUN git clone https://github.com/your/project.git /project

Then we can build with below argument.

docker build --build-arg git_personal_token={your_token} .

In case you have two-factor authentication enabled, make sure that you create a new access token and not regenerate an old one.

That didn't seem to work in my case.

First make sure that you have a SSH key or generate one at: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/

Once you have your key, you have to add it to your github account at: https://github.com/settings/ssh

For Windows users it's useful to run git bash as an administrator.

Now the cloning should work for private repositories (repo), without having to put your username and password.

For me the solution was:

git clone https://[email protected]

Here you need to be the owner of the repo but if you aren't then it will go as

git clone https://[email protected]/ownersusername/repo_name.git

If you have 2FA enabled then:

1. Go to the settings from the profile icon in top right or visit https://github.com/settings/profile
2. Go to the bottom tab or go to https://github.com/settings/tokens
3. Open last tab here Personal tokens. And generate a token
4. Copy the token and run git clone https://[email protected]

When prompted for password put that token in here.

Using Git for Windows it is easier to use HTTPS url.

Open a git shell then git clone https://github.com/user/repo. Enter username and password when prompted. No need to setup a SSH key.

Add your desktop ssh public key in github.

https://github.com/settings/keys

You can clone the repo without any password.

If the newly used computer has different credentials running this command

git clone https://github.com/username/reponame.git

directly will not work. Git will attempt to use the stored credentials and will not prompt you for the username and the password. Since the credentials mismatch, git will output Repository not found and the clone operation fails. The way I solved it was by deleting the old credentials, since I don't use them anymore, and ran the the above mentioned command again and entered the required username and password and cloned the private repo.

As everyone aware about the process of cloning, I would like to add few more things here. Don't worry about special character or writing "@" as "%40" see character encoding

$ git clone https://username:[email protected]/user/repo   

This line can do the job

1. Suppose if I have a password containing special character ( I don't know what to replace for '@' in my password)
2. What if I want to use other temporary password other than my original password

To solve this issue I encourage to use GitHub Developer option to generate Access token. I believe Access token is secure and you wont find any special character.

creating-a-personal-access-token

Now I will write the below code to access my repository.

$ git clone https://username:[email protected]/user/repo

I am just replacing my original password with Access-token, Now I am not worried if some one see my access credential , I can regenerate the token when ever I feel.

Make sure you have checked repo Full control of private repositories