[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository

Question

I am using macOS Catalina. I already have a repository on GitLab and an SSH-key assigned. Now I want to create another repository from the terminal. I do the following:

git config user.name my_name
git config user.email my_email
git init

Then I get this:

Initialized empty Git repository in directory

So far so good.

git remote add origin [email protected]:my_name/repo.git
git add .
git commit -m 'commit'
git push -u origin master

Then I get the following error:

[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

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

Then I go to the repository I already had and try to push there, everything works so I guess I don't have a problem with SSH-key. I know this is a very common question on the internet but none of the answers solved my problem.

Answer 1

First, you should get "Initialized empty Git repository in directory" only after a git init ., not after a git remote add origin ...

Second, with GitLab, you can push to create a new project, as illustrated in this MR, starting with GitLab 10.5 (Q1 2018)

Third, if the error persists, then the key is somehow at fault.
Test it with:

ssh -Tv [email protected]

Also

git -c core.sshCommand="ssh -v" push -u origin master

To generate a valid key:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -P "" -m PEM

And register your new id_rsa.pub to your GitLab profile.

Answer 2

I tried all the above mentioned solutions but none of it worked. I then read the logs and found that it is looking for the key in a specific folder and I created the key and added it to my Gitlab profile too. Then it started working.

Git authentication issue can be solved by reading the logs of the git and creating appropriate SSH keys under appropriate folders.

Steps

1. Run the following command and it will try to push the code and if it not successful then it will display where the error is

   git -c core.sshCommand="ssh -v" push -u origin master
   
   

2. Now, we can generate a new SSH key and the following command will generate a key in the working folder.

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -P "" -m PEM
   
   

It will ask for key name, you can give id_rsa as the key name or any name which the Bash displays as "Trying private key: c:/Users/Dell/.ssh/". Once the key is generated in bash, your working directory will have the key.

3. While running the command in step1, you will see that the folder in which it is looking for a private key. In my case it is "c:/Users/Dell/.ssh/id_rsa"

4. We should put the generated keys from the working folder into this folder

 

5. We should also make sure that we add our SSH Key to the Gitlab account. Click on your Gitlab account MyProfile and select preferences. Click to see how to add SSH to your Gitlab account  

6. Click the SSH keys menu, open the generated key file using notepad and copy the content of the key from notepad and paste it in the SSH key text editor and save it . Click to see how to add SSH Key to your Gitlab account

7. Again, run the following command and check now. The code will be pushed.

   git -c core.sshCommand="ssh -v" push -u origin master
   
   

the code will be pushed.