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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-03T08:53:07+00:00

[Update2] So is it OK that when I run git from the CLI it

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[Update2]
So is it OK that when I run git from the CLI it prompts me for the password? I am able to access the github servers with the passphrase for the ssh private key, but I am never prompted for this in Jenkins or asked to provide it.
[/Update2]

[Update]
Yes. I am running this on a ubuntu instance on EC2. I’ve generated the ssh keys in /var/lib/jenkins/.ssh which is the user that Jenkins creates. I’ve set the security option in Jenkins to use Unix user/groups.
[/Update]

I am trying to have Jenkins pull from git (github). I get the following error:

hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Could not clone [my personal repo]
    at hudson.plugins.git.GitAPI.clone(GitAPI.java:245)
    at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$2.invoke(GitSCM.java:1121)
    at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$2.invoke(GitSCM.java:1063)
    at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:832)
    at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:814)
    at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM.checkout(GitSCM.java:1063)
    at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1218)
    at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.checkout(AbstractBuild.java:581)
    at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.run(AbstractBuild.java:470)
    at hudson.model.Run.run(Run.java:1434)
    at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:46)
    at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
    at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:239)
Caused by: hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "git clone --progress -o origin git@github.com:bobbylo/Verbify.git /var/lib/jenkins/.jenkins/jobs/build_dev/workspace" returned status code 128:
stdout: Initialized empty Git repository in /var/lib/jenkins/.jenkins/jobs/build_dev/workspace/.git/

stderr: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

I’ve already gone through the Github ssh tutorial. I’ve generated a private key on an EC2 instance. Placed it into the .ssh directory of the user, jenkins. Placed the public key on Github (tried both Deploy Key + normal SSH Key). I’ve verified that I can do git over-the-wire operations (pull, clone, etc.) and that it works from the CLI with the user. I’ve set the unix user/group permissions correctly for the user (in fact when I change it, I see the error log change in Jenkin’s console log). When I try to use the Jenkin git plugin or do a Jenkins shell command, I get the error above.

I’ve read about ssh-agent and ssh-add and how you can tie it to your shell startup script so you don’t need to enter a password for every command — I am not sure if that’s relevant here.

Otherwise I am not sure what else I can try. Any tips would be helpful!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Figured it out:

    -It turns out if you’re running it not as a daemon it uses the shell environment in which you ran it.
    -It also turns out any cmd that requires user prompt (like ssh paraphrase) Jenkins treats as an error.

    The solution for now is to:

    -Run Jenkins after I have added the github pub key to ssh-agent via ssh-add so that it doesn’t prompt for the paraphrase.

    If I wanted to run Jenkins as a daemon process I’d imagine having to set up ssh-agent correctly before running it (I don’t think it uses the current shell environment?).

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