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GitHub Error Message - Permission denied (publickey)

Anybody seen this error and know what to do?

I'm using the terminal, I'm in the root, the GitHub repository exists and I don't know what to do now.

> git push -u origin master
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Solution

  • GitHub isn't able to authenticate you. So, either you aren't setup with an SSH key, because you haven't set one up on your machine, or your key isn't associated with your GitHub account.

    You can also use the HTTPS URL instead of the SSH/git URL to avoid having to deal with SSH keys. This is GitHub's recommended method.

    Further, GitHub has a help page specifically for that error message, and explains in more detail everything you could check.

    To solve it:

    1. You should have a public key in your home directory, thus print the content of your public key, in Linux distro run for example cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub (if the prior doesn't work, check the keys inside ~/.ssh/ with .pub extension)

    2. Add the content of such a public key to your Github account: click your profile photo -> Settings-> SSH and GPG keys -> New SSH key or Add SSH key