GitHub authentication failing over https, returning wrong email address

git github https
ele picture ele · Jan 3, 2014 · Viewed 142.9k times · Source

Initiating a push or any other action with GitHub from the command line (over https, not ssh) that calls for the username and password not only fails but, when it does, it returns 

Username for 'https://github.com': username
Password for 'https://[email protected]': 
remote: Invalid username or password.
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://github.com/username/repository.git/'

I do not have an @github.com address. The password and username are correct.

I know I could switch to SSH and use keys but that doesn't answer why the authentication is failing over https.

Answer

ele picture ele · Jan 27, 2014

GitHub's support determined the root of the issue right away: Two-factor authorization.

To use GitHub over the shell with https, create an OAuth token. As the page notes, I did have to remove my username and password credentials from Keychain but with osx-keychain in place, the token is stored as the password and things work exactly as they would over https without two-factor authorization in place.

Related questions

Why does GitHub recommend HTTPS over SSH?

On the GitHub site there is a link... https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys ... and it states... If you have decided not to use the recommended HTTPS method, we can use SSH keys to establish a secure connection between your …

Read More
How to change a connection to GitHub from SSH to HTTPS?

I created my first repository in GitHub yesterday. When making the connection I used SSH instead of HTTPS, so I went through a little painful SSH key creation and connection process. At some point I got stuck and the connection …

Read More
How can I determine the URL that a local Git repository was originally cloned from?

I pulled a project from GitHub a few days ago. I've since discovered that there are several forks on GitHub, and I neglected to note which one I took originally. How can I determine which of those forks I pulled?

Read More