git push heroku master Permission denied (publickey). fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Travis Jensen picture Travis Jensen · Aug 31, 2012 · Viewed 34.1k times · Source

Please excuse a bit of frustration, which I will try to keep in check since Heroku is using SO as their customer support (which I think it shoddy to say the least).

For the last five hours I have been trying to get an application to publish, but invariably something goes wrong with the keys. I've read dozens of articles and tried tip after tip in an effort to figure out where, in the stupid, completely opaque process Heroku is screwing up.

My use case is not that difficult: I have created a new keypair for my heroku apps. I have set that key to be my key:

  > heroku keys
  === [email protected] Keys
  ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC...avOqfA7ZBd [email protected]

I can log in and "create" an application (stupid name, since it seems to be creating a git repo, not any sort of app) without problem. But every *freaking* time I try to push my app, I get:

  > git push heroku master
  Permission denied (publickey).
  fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

I have no insight into WTF is going on with it; I'm just stuck banging my head against a keyboard with no recourse but to hope the almighty god of Google can answer it. And google isn't answering it (well, let me take that back, I've seen about a dozen ways to answer this).

For a system that is supposed to be easy, this is a joke. I like the idea of Heroku, but after taking five our to get absolutely nothing done, I'm thinking maybe it is the wrong choice.

Answer

jquintana picture jquintana · Mar 4, 2013

There are a variety of solutions around the web. I will try to condense the available options into one post. Please try your connection again after every step.

  • Step 1: Attempt adding you public key to Heroku

    heroku keys:add ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub // or just heroku keys:add and it will prompt you to pick one of your keys
    
  • Step 2: Generate a new set of SSH keys, then attempt the first step again

    https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys

  • Step 3: Verify and/or modify your config file

    vim ~/.ssh/config
    
    Host heroku.com
    Hostname heroku.com 
    Port 22 
    IdentitiesOnly yes 
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa    <--- Should be your public SSH key
    TCPKeepAlive yes 
    User [email protected]
    
  • Step 4: Remove the heroku remote from git, the recreate the connection, adding the remote via heroku create will only be an option for new repositories. Be sure to delete your old repo that you originally attempted to create

     $ git remote rm heroku
     $ heroku create
    
  • Step 5: Reinstall Heroku Toolkit