Could not create work tree dir 'example.com'.: Permission denied

Question

I have got a virtual private server with nginx Virtual Hosts setup (Server Blocks).

I've installed Git and got my ssh keys authenticated with GitHub.

I have my website running in

 ~/var/www/example.com/public_html/

I tried to run:

git clone [email protected]:example/example.co.uk.git

to pull my files on GitHub to the /public_html/ directory but I get the error:

fatal: could not create work tree dir 'example.com'.: Permission denied

I've followed this tutorial including the same issue he has mentioned on the page, but it still won't work: http://machiine.com/2013/pulling-a-git-repo-from-github-to-your-ubuntu-server/

I'm completely new to this, so your help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I think you don't have your permissions set up correctly for /var/www Change the ownership of the folder.

sudo chown -R $USER /var/www

Answer 2

I was facing the same issue but it was not a permission issue.

When you are doing git clone it will create try to create replica of the respository structure.

When its trying to create the folder/directory with same name and path in your local os process is not allowing to do so and hence the error. There was "background" java process running in Task-manager which was accessing the resource of the directory(folder) and hence it was showing as permission denied for git operations. I have killed those process and that solved my problem. Cheers!!