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I recently became unable to push any changes to any of my repositories on Gitlab.com.

I know this sometimes happens if you've changed your SSH keys, or the site's down, but as far as I know, I haven't changed anything in my ~/.ssh directory, and Gitlab.com appears to be working.

Yet if I run git push I get the error:

You are not allowed to push code to this project.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Oddly, git pull still works. I also tried re-cloning the repo, making and commit and pushing, but that still fails. Adding the --verbose option showed no further details.

I double checked that the SSH key on file in my Gitlab account matches the key on file in my ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file. I also tried adding the entry of my ~/.ssh/config:

Host gitlab.com
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

but that had no effect.

What's going on here? Why is Gitlab suddenly not accepting the SSH key on file?

Cerin
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    I had something similar happen but I was trying to add a second gitlab account to my system. I had two ssh keys and tried to create an ssh config that used the second key. For some reason, even though it did try to use the key when I tested with `ssh -Tvvv git@my-aliased-gitlab.com`, it kept logging me in with the wrong identity. I ended up finding a solution on [gitlab's documentation page](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ssh/) and did this to make it work: `git config core.sshCommand "ssh -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -i ~/.ssh/private-key-filename-for-this-repository -F /dev/null"` – James C Jul 07 '20 at 20:10

2 Answers2

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Check first that the remote URL (git remote -v) is indeed an SSH one (git@gitlab:...), and not an HTTPS one (https://gitlab.com/...)

In the latter case (HTTPS), only your git config credential.helper could explain the error, having cached the wrong credentials (username/password for your GitLab account)

In case of the former, try and create a new SSH key with the old PEM format instead of the new OPENSSH one, in case that is better supported by GitLab.

VonC
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i've hit this problem by having multiple gitlab accounts, each with different ssh keys. its confusing to login to the website, create a project, make it world accessible, pull it down, and then not be able to push back up.

the problem was i had a second gitlab account with keys that showed up first in my key chain.

for instance, account1 is associated with ~/.ssh/id_rsa, account2 is associated with ~/.ssh/id_ed25519. i login to gitlab with account1, create and clone a repo and then can't push. the problem is that my ssh keychain had id_ed25519 first, so gitlab thinks account2 is trying to push the edits back up, which doesn't have permissions.

i noticed there was a feature request for the error message to be more verbose so that it would be easier to debug this problem. they said "good idea" then closed the request. :/

keithpjolley
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