hub: hub complains "Unauthorized (HTTP 401)" and "Bad credentials"

hub 2.2.2 on OS X complains “Unauthorized (HTTP 401)” and “Bad credentials” when I try to check out a pull request.

I have not used hub before. My credentials work in curl and on the web site. I have nothing in any OS X keychain matching “github”. My usual github access uses an SSH key and no 2FA.

% hub --version
git version 2.6.3 (Apple Git-62)
hub version 2.2.2

% ls ~/.config/hub
ls: /Volumes/precious/gparker/.config/hub: No such file or directory

[note git is not an alias, so the following is real git and not hub]

% git clone git@github.com:/apple/swift.git
Cloning into 'swift'...
remote: Counting objects: 318893, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (123/123), done.
remote: Total 318893 (delta 42), reused 1 (delta 1), pack-reused 318768
Receiving objects: 100% (318893/318893), 66.27 MiB | 4.56 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (261489/261489), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Checking out files: 100% (9920/9920), done.

% cd swift

% env HUB_VERBOSE=1 hub checkout http://github.com/apple/swift/pull/862
github.com username: gparker42
github.com password for gparker42 (never stored): 
> GET https://api.github.com/repos/apple/swift/pulls/862
> Authorization: token 
< HTTP 401
{"message":"Bad credentials","documentation_url":"https://developer.github.com/v3"}
Error getting pull request: Unauthorized (HTTP 401)
Bad credentials

[note that I don’t have anything in ~/.config/hub after this sequence]

% curl -u gparker42 https://api.github.com/repos/apple/swift/pulls/862
Enter host password for user 'gparker42':
{
  "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/apple/swift/pulls/862",
  "id": 54923914,
  "html_url": "https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/862",
  […]

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 8 years ago
Reactions: 10
Comments: 68 (32 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Nevermind: After removing $HOME/.config/hub it works. It asked my user/pass and stored a new token. I expected it to be found in $HOME/.gitconfig because there I removed it the first time.

+62

kakra on Feb 20, 2016

I had this same problem. Turns out I had set GITHUB_TOKEN in my .zshrc long ago, to a token that was no longer valid. Removing this fixed the issue.

+30

cacrawford on Apr 18, 2016

I’m sorry everyone for the bad experience. Hub error messaging should be more helpful in terms of what exactly failed and how to fix it.

The best course of action would be to completely refresh your credentials. To do that:

Make sure that you don’t have GITHUB_TOKEN set in your environment - check echo $GITHUB_TOKEN;
- If there is some token there, check your shell initialization files for where that’s set and clear it.
Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens/ and generate a new token with repo and gist scopes;
(Optionally) Authorize that token for your org with SSO;
Open (or create new file) ~/.config/hub and paste the following:
```
github.com:
- user: YOURUSERNAME
  oauth_token: YOURTOKEN
```

+18

mislav on Nov 17, 2020

It works for me after updating the oauth_token value within ~/.config/hub

shawnzhu on Feb 26, 2016

Regenerate your token at: https://github.com/settings/tokens/ Open the config file as vim ~/.config/hub Paste your generated token like the following: oauth_token: PASTE_HERE

Now you can use: hub create

aabarbosa on Nov 17, 2020

I just ran into this issue. The fix was:

vi ~/.config/hub

There was some strange code there, perhaps an old token from a late night code binge. It was wrong. Set the correct access token (created in Github Settings) making the file look like:

---
github.com:
- user: pboling
  oauth_token: this-is-my-special-token-please-dont-steal-it-:D

pboling on May 10, 2018

Can I force hub to use ssh? That’s what I thought I was doing by specifying GITHUB_HOST=git@github.xxx.com

No, that doesn’t work. Hub needs to access the GitHub API over HTTPS and that has nothing to do with git push/pull protocol (which is ssh for you).

You can generate a Personal Access token from your user settings and manually configure hub to use it. Create a ~/.config/hub file with:

my.example.org:
- user: rsworden
  oauth_token: YOURTOKENHERE
  protocol: https

Note that “protocol” value here can only be https or http, but not ssh.

mislav on Mar 1, 2017

@AndrewSB Thanks for all the info. That indeed looks like a bug.

If you run HUB_VERBOSE=1 hub clone proxyco/consumer-ios, there will be more debugging info about HTTP requests for you to inspect. Maybe you will find something interesting. Just remember to strip away all the sensitive info (such as tokens) before pasting any of that information here.

If you want to unblock yourself for now while we investigate this, you can generate a Personal Access Token from your settings online and paste it in a ~/.config/hub file that you create:

github.com:
- user: AndrewSB
  oauth_token: MYTOKEN
  protocol: https

mislav on Nov 11, 2016

I’m still getting the 404 error here in 2020. I’ve tried all of above, and no luck

JulianJorgensen on Nov 4, 2020

I solved the problem by running hub pr list. This caused hub to prompt me for my username and password and then create an OAuth token on my behalf. After going to GitHub and enabling SSO, it’s working flawlessly!

ebanner on May 9, 2019

@pboling yes, and just like last time that worked. However this bug is about hub rejecting valid credentials.

If I put in my username and token, it should accept them, not throw a 401 until I put the same username and token into a config file.

llimllib on May 11, 2018

Just wanted to drop a note that I was also getting this same HTTP Unauthorized error on macOS Sierra and hub version 2.2.9 installed via brew. Using HUB_VERBOSE it looked like everything was going through correctly, and indeed github.com showed a new personal access token created, but hub was still showing the error and asking for my credentials every time I ran it. The fix for me was creating the ~/.config directory manually (this is a pretty fresh install of Sierra and it didn’t exist) and then re-running hub.

andymorris on Dec 5, 2016

Yes, that does seem to work.

maxandersen on Sep 22, 2016

@maxandersen In the meantime, until hub implements re-authorization, can you just swap your token in ~/.config/hub with the one that you pasted as GITHUB_TOKEN?

mislav on Sep 22, 2016

Via the API? I’m not sure. We log into the website via an SSO front-door and do git operations via ssh. That might be the problem. Might want to add something to the docs about how to set up the ~/.config/hub file manually.

dbushong on Sep 15, 2016