Push to GitHub error: Couldn't find host github.com in the .netrc file; using defaults

Question

I don't know, what is going on, I got no response from github. I tried a git push for the first time in a month or so and got this. Turned on export GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1 and did a push and get this:

localhost:send2mobile_rails phil$ git push
Password: 
* Couldn't find host github.com in the .netrc file; using defaults
* About to connect() to github.com port 443 (#0)
*   Trying 207.97.227.239... * Connected to github.com (207.97.227.239) port 443 (#0)
* SSL connection using DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA
* Server certificate:
*    subject: O=*.github.com; OU=Domain Control Validated; CN=*.github.com
*    start date: 2009-12-11 05:02:36 GMT
*    expire date: 2014-12-11 05:02:36 GMT
*    subjectAltName: github.com matched
*    issuer: C=US; ST=Arizona; L=Scottsdale; O=GoDaddy.com, Inc.; OU=http://certificates.godaddy.com/repository; CN=Go Daddy Secure Certification Authority; serialNumber=07969287
*    SSL certificate verify ok.
> GET /303devworks/send2mobile_rails.git/info/refs?service=git-receive-pack HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: git/1.7.1
Host: github.com
Accept: */*
Pragma: no-cache

< HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required
< Server: nginx/0.7.61
< Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:53:13 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
< Connection: keep-alive
< Content-Length: 0
< WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Repository"
< 
* Connection #0 to host github.com left intact
* Issue another request to this URL: 'https://[email protected]/MYUSERHERE/send2mobile_rails.git/info/refs?service=git-receive-pack'
* Couldn't find host github.com in the .netrc file; using defaults
* Re-using existing connection! (#0) with host github.com
* Connected to github.com (207.97.227.239) port 443 (#0)
* Server auth using Basic with user '303devworks'
> GET /303devworks/send2mobile_rails.git/info/refs?service=git-receive-pack HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Basic MzAzZGVfd29sa3M6Y29nbmwzNzIw
User-Agent: git/1.7.1
Host: github.com
Accept: */*
Pragma: no-cache

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Server: nginx/0.7.61
< Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:53:13 GMT
< Content-Type: application/x-git-receive-pack-advertisement
< Connection: keep-alive
< Status: 200 OK
< Pragma: no-cache
< Content-Length: 153
< Expires: Fri, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMT
< Cache-Control: no-cache, max-age=0, must-revalidate
< 
* Expire cleared
* Connection #0 to host github.com left intact
Counting objects: 166, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (133/133), done.
* Couldn't find host github.com in the .netrc file; using defaults
* About to connect() to github.com port 443 (#0)
*   Trying 207.97.227.239... * connected
* Connected to github.com (207.97.227.239) port 443 (#0)
* SSL re-using session ID
* SSL connection using DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA
* old SSL session ID is stale, removing
* Server certificate:
*    subject: O=*.github.com; OU=Domain Control Validated; CN=*.github.com
*    start date: 2009-12-11 05:02:36 GMT
*    expire date: 2014-12-11 05:02:36 GMT
*    subjectAltName: github.com matched
*    issuer: C=US; ST=Arizona; L=Scottsdale; O=GoDaddy.com, Inc.; OU=http://certificates.godaddy.com/repository; CN=Go Daddy Secure Certification Authority; serialNumber=07969287
*    SSL certificate verify ok.
* Server auth using Basic with user 'MYUSERHERE'
> POST /303devworks/send2mobile_rails.git/git-receive-pack HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Basic JzAzZGV1d29ya3M6Y25nb29zNzIq
User-Agent: git/1.7.1
Host: github.com
Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip
Content-Type: application/x-git-receive-pack-request
Accept: application/x-git-receive-pack-result
Expect: 100-continue
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

* The requested URL returned error: 411
* Closing connection #0
error: RPC failed; result=22, HTTP code = 411
Writing objects: 100% (140/140), 2.28 MiB | 1.93 MiB/s, done.
Total 140 (delta 24), reused 0 (delta 0)
^C
localhost:send2mobile_rails phil$ 

Answer 1

I had the same issue and believe that it has to do with the size of the repo (edited- or the size of a particular file) you are trying to push.

Basically I was able to create new repos and push them to github. But an existing one would not work.

The HTTP error code seems to back me up it is a 'Length Required' error. So maybe it is too large to calc or greated that the max. Who knows.

EDIT

I found that the problem may be files that are large. I had one update that would not push even though I had successful pushes up to that point. There was only one file in the commit but it happened to be 1.6M

So I added the following config change

git config http.postBuffer 524288000

To allow up to the file size 500M and then my push worked. It may have been that this was the problem initially with pushing a big repo over the http protocol.

END EDIT

the way I could get it to work (EDIT before I modified postBuffer) was to tar up my repo, copy it to a machine that can do git over ssh, and push it to github. Then when you try to do a push/pull from the original server it should work over https. (since it is a much smaller amount of data than an original push).

Hope this helps.