Using personal access token for GitHub authentication fails

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1

I’m having trouble with GitHub authentication when using a personal access token. I followed the GitHub documentation for token authentication but I keep getting authentication errors when trying to push changes from a CI environment.

Here’s what I’m doing:

export HOME_DIR=$HOME
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
git config --global user.name "myusername"

curl -u "myusername:<TOKEN_HERE>" https://github.com/myusername/project-repo.git
git clone --branch=main https://github.com/myusername/project-repo.git main-branch

cd main-branch
mkdir deployment
cd deployment
touch index.html

git add .
git commit -m "Auto deploy from build $BUILD_ID"
git push origin main

But I get these error messages:

remote: Anonymous access to myusername/project-repo.git denied.
fatal: Authentication failed for ‘https://github.com/myusername/project-repo.git/’

The token has the right permissions but something isn’t working. Any ideas what I’m missing?

2

Your git clone command doesn’t have authentication - that’s why the push fails. You’re testing auth with curl but not actually using the token for git operations.

GitHub tokens in CI are a pain. Token expiration, security, different repos - it’s a mess.

I had the same headache until I automated my CI/CD pipeline. Now GitHub auth and deployments just work through automated workflows.

It handles token rotation and multiple repos automatically. Way cleaner.

Check this out for automating everything: https://latenode.com

3

yup, looks like you’re missing the token in the git clone cmd. try this: git clone https://myusername:[email protected]/myusername/project-repo.git. or set up a credential helper, it’ll handle the token for ya. that should help!

4

It seems that the error is due to not providing your personal access token during the git clone operation. While your curl command tests the authentication, it doesn’t set these credentials for git operations. I faced similar issues previously when using CI tools. One effective solution is to configure Git’s credential helper. Run the following commands to store your credentials:

 git config credential.helper store
echo "https://myusername:[email protected]" > ~/.git-credentials

This way, Git will automatically utilize your token for all operations. Just ensure your token is valid and has ‘repo’ permissions.