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Posted April 27, 2015 4:14pm by

Error 403 in response to git push -u origin master

Hi, I'm getting the following message:

♥ git push -u origin master remote: Permission to OctoWallE/treebook_p.git denied to WallisWT. fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/OctoWallE/treebook_p.git/': The requested URL returned error: 403

I'm running git version 2.3.2

I've tried a few times and am pretty sure it wasn't a random typo issue.

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

April 27, 2015 4:45pm

A 403 HTTP error means that you don't have permission to access that repository. What username do you have on GitHub?

April 27, 2015 6:22pm

My username on GitHub is OctoWallE

April 27, 2015 6:24pm

Because Git apparently thinks that your username is WallisWT. That's why it won't let you push.

Let me try to figure out a solution for you.

April 27, 2015 7:55pm

gitconfig is now:

[user] name = Wallis Tsai email = myname@domainname.com

WallisWT github account email is oldemail OctoWallE github account email is currentemail gitconfig email is currentemail (same as OctoWallE github account)

5 Answers

April 27, 2015 6:40pm

Okay, try running the following two commands in your terminal, replacing the obvious things:

git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
git config --global user.email "Your Email Address Here"

Then close the terminal, reopen it, and try running git push -u origin master remote again.

April 27, 2015 7:05pm

Thanks for looking into this -- I'm getting a different error now:

♥ git push -u origin master remote error: src refspec remote does not match any. error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/OctoWallE/treebook_p.git'

After seeing that, I went into my gitconfig file to see if something looked wrong: ♥ subl $HOME/.gitconfig

Interestingly, even though my email & name were updated (name = OctoWallE), there was a portion that said: [github] user: WallisWT

I changed this WallisWT --> OctoWallE

I closed Terminal, reopened and tried: [15:03:10] (master) treebook ♥ git push -u origin master remote: Permission to OctoWallE/treebook_p.git denied to WallisWT. fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/OctoWallE/treebook_p.git/': The requested URL returned error: 403

I double-checked my $HOME/.gitconfig file, and the switch from WallisWT to OctoWallE was still there...

April 27, 2015 7:18pm

In your project folder, run subl .git/config from your terminal and see if WallisWT is in that file.

April 27, 2015 7:22pm

Thanks, subl .git/config shows

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
    ignorecase = true
    precomposeunicode = true
[remote "origin"]
    url = https://github.com/OctoWallE/treebook_p.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

I also checked my bash profile, and the 4 references to WallisWT were all in the context of Users/WallisWT on my mac...I've included the context for these 4 references below, in case that helps:

# Aliases
function desktop {
  cd /Users/WallisWT/Desktop/$@
}
function code {
  cd /Users/WallisWT/Development/code/$@
}

*******further down in bash_profile**********

complete -o default -o nospace -F _rakecomplete rake

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*
[[ -s "/Users/WallisWT/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "/Users/WallisWT/.rvm/scripts/rvm"  # This loads RVM into a shell session.if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi

April 27, 2015 7:26pm

What are the contents of your ~/.gitconfig file?

April 27, 2015 7:30pm

gitconfig file is as follow. I put in a not-real email, but everything else is exactly the same. The actual email I use is the same one attached to my github account.

Thanks again for all your efforts to figure out what is going on here

[user]
    email = myemail@domainname.com
    name = Wallis Tsai
[core]
    autocrlf = input
    safecrlf = true
    whitespace=fix,-indent-with-non-tab,trailing-space,cr-at-eol
    excludesfile = /Users/WallisWT/.gitignore_global

[alias]
    st = status
    ci = commit
    br = branch
    co = checkout
    df = diff
    lg = log -p
    who = shortlog -s --
    up = pull
    pu = !"git fetch origin -v; git fetch upstream -v; git merge upstream/master"
  switch = !legit switch \"$@\"
  branches = !legit branches
  sprout = !legit sprout \"$@\"
  unpublish = !legit unpublish \"$@\"
  harvest = !legit harvest \"$@\"
  sync = !legit sync \"$@\"
  publish = !legit publish \"$@\"
  graft = !legit graft \"$@\"

[github]
  user = OctoWallE

[color]
  ui = true
  diff = auto
  status = auto
  branch = auto

[diff "ruby"]
  funcname = ^ *\\(\\(class\\|module\\|def\\) .*\\)

[push]
  default = current

[difftool "sourcetree"]
  cmd = opendiff \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
  path =

[mergetool "sourcetree"]
  cmd = /Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/opendiff-w.sh \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" -ancestor \"$BASE\" -merge \"$MERGED\"
  trustExitCode = true

[format]
  pretty = %C(yellow)%h%Creset %s %C(red)(%an, %cr)%Creset
[filter "hawser"]
    clean = git hawser clean %f
    smudge = git hawser smudge %f
    required = true

September 20, 2017 2:47pm

Thank you Ryan, this still helped me in 2017!

April 27, 2015 7:38pm

Glad I can help! A lot of this is just me learning with you. I haven't really taken the time to learn the ins and outs of Git like I should have, and I'm learning about Git's internals right now as well.

This will be a long shot, but try running this command in your terminal:

mv ~/.gitconfig ~/.gitconfig_old

After that, restart your terminal and run this command, replacing the obvious:

 git config --global user.name "Your Real Name Here" && git config --global user.email "Your Email Address Here"

And after that, try pushing to GitHub again. It will almost certainly ask for a username and password.

Let me know if it works!

April 27, 2015 7:47pm

hm, it's still denying access:

I checked on GitHub and I do have an old / dormant account where my username was WallisWT, but I'm not sure why it's still "reading" me as that.

April 27, 2015 7:49pm

Can you paste the contents of your ~/.gitconfig file again? Also, is the email address you're using for your OctoWallE account the same as for your WallisWT account?

April 27, 2015 8:46pm

Hmm, this has me stumped. Can you try downloading GitHub for Mac and signing in there?

July 18, 2018 1:50pm

Hey, I have the exact same problem. Have you found a solution?

July 18, 2018 2:12pm

I figured it out! You have to change your KeyChain account on the mac settings.

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