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I want to clone a repo of another person using ssh. For this I did following things:

  • Generated an ssh key in local machine.
  • Added the key to the user's account from which the repo has to be cloned.
  • Tested whether the key was added by running ssh -T [email protected] which outputs : Hi username! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
  • Ran git clone [email protected]:repo/repo.git.

The last step outputs Cloning into 'Foldername'... and I can see that the folder is created but no files are present in the folder. I left it for 1 hour but nothing was copied and I also checked the net but its working fine. I am using cygwin on windows to clone the repo.

What am I doing wrong?

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  • How did you generate your ssh key? Did you add your public key to your account? Have you tried cloning any small public repos? Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 7:35
  • Yes I was cloning small repos in the morning with username and password which worked fine, but when I used ssh for cloning with [email protected]:repo/repo.git it just keeps giving cloning foldername.. . I have only added the public key to the remote users's account and is there a need to add the key to my account? Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 7:52
  • Who is this "remote user" you keep talking about? Are you trying to clone one of your own repos? Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 8:14
  • sorry for the misleading term, actually the repo is not in my account but in my colleague's account. I can't fork it in my account as then it will be public. So I added the key into that account not mine. Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 9:20

3 Answers 3

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I have solved the problem. The problem was occurring because of different home directories of Git bash and cygwin.

When I generated the ssh key in my cygwin terminal the key was added to cygwin's .ssh folder which was C:\cygwin\home\windows\.ssh and when I ran the command ssh -T [email protected] it authenticated me using the ssh key which was in cygwin's .ssh directory.

But when I ran the command git clone [email protected]:repo/repo.git, the key in git bash's home directory was used which was in C:\Users\windows\.ssh. I copied the key present in cygwin's .ssh folder into this folder and everything worked fine.

However the weird thing is the git clone [email protected]:repo/repo.git command didn't threw any error but instead just hanged.

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+1. Good addition to my initial answer which was about the "private" nature of the fork.
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I can't fork it in my account as then it will be public.

Nope: a private repo that you fork... would remain private!
This is detailed in "If I fork someone else's private Github repo into my account, is it going to appear in my account as a public repo?".

So if cloning from your account works, forking the repo of your colleague could be a good solution.

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GitHub is currently experiencing downtime (see also https://status.github.com/), so that might be your issue:

We're investigating an increase in unicorns.

That's a humorous way to say that people are getting 404s on the pages on GitHub, because their 404 page has a unicorn on it:

enter image description here

It's not uncommon for GitHub to experience minor/major outages, probably because it's such a popular service. They also experience the occasional DDoS attack:

We're currently experiencing a large DDoS attack. The site is experiencing major ... See more at https://status.github.com/.

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I am trying this for 2 days and was unable to clone it.

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