GitLab git user password

Question

Not strictly related to the current scenario. Sometimes when you are prompted for password, it is because you added the wrong* origin format (HTTPS instead of SSH)

HTTP(S) protocol is commonly used for public repos with strong username+pass
SSH authentication is more common for internal projects where you can authenticate with a ssh-key-file and simple pass-phrase
GitLab users are more likely to use the SSH protocol

View your remote info with

git remote -v

If you see HTTP(S) address, this is the command to change it to SSH:

git remote set-url origin [email protected]_domain.com/example-project.git

It prompted me for password.

It shouldn't.
If you have the right public/private key representing a user authorized to access project-x, then gitlab won't ask you for anything.

But that supposes that ssh -vT [email protected] is working first.

The Solution from https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-shell/issues/46 worked for me.

By setting the permissions:

chmod 700 /home/git/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys

password prompt disappears.

I had this same problem when using a key of 4096 bits:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "GitLab" -b 4096
$ ssh -vT git@gitlabhost
...
debug1: Offering public key: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Trying private key: /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Trying private key: /home/user/.ssh/id_ecdsa
debug1: Next authentication method: password
git@gitlabhost's password:
Connection closed by host

But with the 2048 bit key (the default size), ssh connects to gitlab without prompting for a password (after adding the new pub key to the user's gitlab ssh keys)

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "GitLab"
$ ssh -vT git@gitlabhost
Welcome to GitLab, Joe User!

This can happen if the host has a '-' in its name. (Even though this is legal according to RFC 952.) (Tested using Git Bash under Windows 10 using git 2.13.2.)

ssh prompts me for a password for any host that happens to have a '-' in its name. This would seem to be purely a problem with ssh configuration file parsing because adding an alias to ~/.ssh/config (and using that alias in my git remote urls) resolved the problem.

In other words try putting something like the following in your C:/Users/{username}/.ssh/config

Host {a}
    User git
    Hostname {a-b.domain}
    IdentityFile C:/Users/{username}/.ssh/id_rsa

and where you have a remote of the form

origin  [email protected]:repo-name.git

change the url to use the following the form

git remote set-url origin git@a:repo-name.git

After adding the new SSH Key in GitLab, check if you have "git" group included in SSHD AllowGroups (for Debian /etc/ssh/sshd_config). If not, add it and restart sshd (systemctl restart ssh).

Test it with ssh -vT [email protected] as suggested above.

My problem was that I had a DNS entry for gitlab.example.com to point to my load balancer. So when I tried command ssh [email protected] I was really connecting to the wrong machine.

I made an entry in my ~/.ssh/config file:

Host gitlab.example.com
    Hostname 192.168.1.50

That wasted a lot of time...