How to solve SSL certificate: self signed certificate when cloning repo from github?

Question

I just installed git for windows and tried to clone glew's repo like this

$ git clone https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git

But I got the following error

Cloning into 'glew'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git/': SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate

I've seen people running into this problem and some possible workarounds.

First try

$ git -c http.sslVerify=false clone https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git
Cloning into 'glew'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git/': Empty reply from server

Second try

$ git config --global http.sslVerify false
$ git clone https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git
Cloning into 'glew'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git/': Empty reply from server

Then I checked for http.sslcainfo entry in the config files

$ git config --system --list
credential.helper=manager

$ git config --global --list
https.proxy=<proxy-address>
http.sslverify=false

System and global config files does not have that entry. So I tried the following which I don't know what file is reading and try to unset it.

$ git config --list
core.symlinks=false
core.autocrlf=true
core.fscache=true
color.diff=auto
color.status=auto
color.branch=auto
color.interactive=true
help.format=html
http.sslcainfo=C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
diff.astextplain.textconv=astextplain
rebase.autosquash=true
credential.helper=manager
http.sslverify=false

$ git config --unset http.sslcainfo
fatal: not in a git directory

Tried with global and system

$ git config --global --unset http.sslcainfo
$ git clone https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git
Cloning into 'glew'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/nigels-com/glew.git/': SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate

$ git config --system --unset http.sslcainfo
error: could not lock config file C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64/etc/gitconfig: Permission denied
error: could not lock config file C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64/etc/gitconfig: Invalid argument

I still cannot clone that github repo. Any other idea I can try to fix this problem? What am I missing?

Answer 1

You can disable SSL verification using the below command

git config --global http.sslVerify false