Question

I have git installed and working as expected on my local system or a network share, but have not been able to get it to access the remote bare repository on my server using ssh.

I have installed msysgit and CopSSH on the server and msysgit, putty and tortoisegit on my local system. I am able to open a putty session or use plink successfully — at least I believe plink is successful, but more on that in a bit.

When I attempt to clone a remote repository I get this:

D:\Temp> git clone uname@server:e:/path/test.git Test
Cloning into Test...
fatal: protocol error: bad line length character: Micr

The error message has been consistent for a while, but at times (from one reinstall attempt to another) the last four characters will be ‘Micr’, ‘Allo’ or something else I don’t remember right now. In the currently installed state it is ‘Micr’.

So the big question is what am I not doing right?

Although I imagine it would be much easier to correct what was wrong if I could get the actual error message instead of the generic one followed by the first four characters of the actual error message. Any idea if that is possible?

Answer 1

First, you have variables like export GIT_TRACE=1 and export GIT_TRACE_PACKET=1 which can help debugging this kind of situation.

Second, this error is often caused by any kind of display done during the ssh session (see for instance this thread), like a .bashrc on the server side with an echo in it.

I have a wrapper set-up around ssh that sets the window title of the shell to the ssh command argument. That is what messes things up!

See also Git FAQ

Other causes include:

• using the right ssh
• correctly forcing to use git-shell
• using --exec-path from the server_arg on the server side

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Note: with Git 2.6+ (Q3 2015), see also “GIT_TRACE_PACKFILE“.