Git Pull: Change Authentication

Git Pull: Change Authentication

After three hours of searching and playing I have found the answer myself. The authentication details are stored in the .git/config file under the url setting in the [remote "origin"] section.

How do I provide a username and password when running git clone git@remote.git?

Based on Michael Scharf's comment:

You can leave out the password so that it won't be logged in your Bash history file:

git clone https://username@github.com/username/repository.git

It will prompt you for your password.

Alternatively, you may use:

git clone https://username:password@github.com/username/repository.git

This way worked for me from a GitHub repository.

How do I update the password for Git?

To fix this on macOS, you can use

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

A username and password prompt will appear with your next Git action (pull, clone, push, etc.).

For Windows, it's the same command with a different argument:

git config --global credential.helper wincred

Bitbucket fails to authenticate on git pull

You need to reset the password as shown below.

On macOS:

git config --global credential.helper osxkeychain

On Windows 10/11:

git config --global credential.helper store

After executing this, it prompts you for the user name and password for your repo.

How to enter command with password for git pull?

This is not exactly what you asked for, but for http(s):

• you can put the password in .netrc file (_netrc on windows). From there it would be picked up automatically. It would go to your home folder with 600 permissions.
• you could also just clone the repo with https://user:pass@domain/repo but that's not really recommended as it would show your user/pass in a lot of places...
• a new option is to use the credential helper. Note that credentials would be stored in clear text in your local config using standard credential helper. credential-helper with wincred can be also used on windows.

Usage examples for credential helper

• git config credential.helper store - stores the credentials indefinitely.
• git config credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'- stores for 60 minutes

For ssh-based access, you'd use ssh agent that will provide the ssh key when needed. This would require generating keys on your computer, storing the public key on the remote server and adding the private key to relevant keystore.

Git push results in Authentication Failed

If you enabled two-factor authentication in your GitHub account you
won't be able to push via HTTPS using your accounts password. Instead
you need to generate a personal access token. This can be done in the
application settings of your GitHub account. Using this token as your
password should allow you to push to your remote repository via HTTPS.
Use your username as usual.

Creating a personal access token

You may also need to update the origin for your repository if it is set to HTTPS. Do this to switch to SSH:

git remote -v
git remote set-url origin git@github.com:USERNAME/REPONAME.git

How to reset git authentication?

It seems that your credential manager stored wrong authentication and reuses it. Reset it.

git config --system --unset credential.helper

More information:

Remove credentials from Git

GitLab remote: HTTP Basic: Access denied and fatal Authentication

How can I save username and password in Git?

Attention: This method saves the credentials in plaintext on your PC's disk. Everyone on your computer can access it, e.g. malicious NPM modules.

Run

git config --global credential.helper store

then

git pull

provide a username and password and those details will then be remembered later. The credentials are stored in a file on the disk, with the disk permissions of "just user readable/writable" but still in plaintext.

If you want to change the password later

git pull

Will fail, because the password is incorrect, git then removes the offending user+password from the ~/.git-credentials file, so now re-run

git pull

to provide a new password so it works as earlier.

git clone: Authentication failed for URL

The culprit was russian account password.

Accidentally set up it (wrong keyboard layout).
Everything was working, so didnt bother changing it.

Out of despair changed it now and it worked.

If someone looked up this thread and its not a solution for you - check out comments under the question and steps i described in question, they might be useful to you.

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