How to clone git repo on private server to local machine via ssh with key?

Question

Can't see any posts that address this specific question so here goes...

I have a git repo on a vps. the repo tracks a website (contained in public_html ) and also directories needed by that website (ie private , tmp , etc.). Like this:

    drwxr-xr-x  8 someuser someuser 4096 Jan 17 07:00 .git/
    drwxrwx---  5 someuser www-data 4096 Jan 17 07:00 private/
    drwxr-x--- 10 someuser www-data 4096 Jan 17 07:00 public_html/
    drwxrwx---  2 someuser www-data 4096 Jan 17 07:00 tmp/

as such, this repo is above the web root, not publicly accessible. ssh with key only access is set up on this linux system.

I want to clone this remote git repo via ssh to my local machine. How?

I have tried git clone ssh://user@ipaddress:22/path/to/repo . but I get:

    Cloning into '.'...
    Permission denied (publickey).
    fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

I don't understand why this is because my ssh config file correctly specifies the IdentityFile and Hostname and normal ssh works fine with these settings.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Answer 1

Setting the environment variable GIT_TRACE to something else than 0 will make git output the expansion of aliases, and delegation to other sub-programs.

This will allow you to see the exact command git uses to ssh to your remote machine.

In any case, here, the message is pretty clear: Permission denied (publickey). This comes from ssh for sure, so if a normal ssh works fine, you need to find the difference between what you call a normal ssh and, the ssh that git is executing.