github: server certificate verification failed

git github debian
Torsten Crass picture Torsten Crass · Mar 6, 2016 · Viewed 120.3k times · Source

I just created a github account and a repository therein, but when trying to create a local working copy using the recommende url via

git clone https://github.com/<user>/<project>.git

I get an error like

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/<user>/<project>.git': server certificate verification failed. CAfile: /home/<user>/.ssl/trusted.pem CRLfile: none

I'm on Debian Jessie, and I would have expected both Debian and GitHub to provide / rely on a selection of commonly accepted CAs, but apparently my system doesn't trust GibHub's certificate.

Any simple way to fix this (without the frequently recommended "GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true" hack and similar work-arounds)?

EDIT:

Additional information:

  • The ca-certificate package is installed.
  • Installing cacert.org's certificates as suggested by @VonC didn't change anything.
  • My personal ~/.ssl/trusted.pem file does contain a couple of entries, but to be honest, I don't remember where the added certificates came from...

  • When removing ~/.ssl/trusted.pem, the git error message changes to

    fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/tcrass/scans2jpg.git/': Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)

EDIT:

@VonC's advice regarding the git https.sslCAinfo option put me on the right track -- I just added the downloaded cacert.org CAs to my trusted.pem, and now git doesn't complain anymore.

Answer

mkebri picture mkebri · Jan 30, 2017

You can also disable SSL verification, (if the project does not require a high level of security other than login/password) by typing :

git config --global http.sslverify false

enjoy git :)

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