GitHub: ERROR: Repository not found. fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly (different from similar posts apparently)

Question

I created a directory, hello_git. In this directory I created a file, hello_git.py, which prints out a "Hello git!" message.

Then I made hello_git my current directory in the terminal and entered the following commands one after another in that directory:

git init
git add hello_git.py
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin [email protected]:githubaccountname/hello_git.git

When I enter the command git push origin master I get asked:

Enter passphrase for key '/home/myusername/.ssh/id_rsa':

When I enter my passphrase (which authenticates successfully using ssh -T [email protected]) I get this:

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

I don't know if this helps, but:

git remote -v

returns:

origin    [email protected]:githubaccountname/hello_git.git (fetch)
origin    [email protected]:githubaccountname/hello_git.git (push)

I have looked into answers of similar posts, but nothing seems to work:

• Fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly while pushing to Git repository

• GitHub ERROR: Repository not found. fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

• How do I resolve this issue of preventing push to origin wrt. GitHub?

Answer 1

Eric has already given the best answer for this question in the case that the repository does not exist, but I want to point out that:

The response pair of "Repository not found. / remote end hung up unexpectedly" is also given by GitHub when the repository does exist, but the user does not have permission to push to it.

If you're absolutely certain that the repository already exists on GitHub, make sure the account you're using has permission to push to that repository.

Answer 2

The error message says it all

ERROR: Repository not found.

Is there a Git repository where you're looking?

You need to create the repository on GitHub first. It can't find the repository because it doesn't exist yet!