Cannot clone private GitHub repository (and yes, I'm using a PAT)

Tom Smith June 10, 2021

Ok, a bazillion people have posted about this symptom.  And they all start with "but I'm different."  Well, me too.

I just refreshed my PAT in GitHub and reentered it as the password for my account in SourceTree.  Now when I go to clone I can see all my repositories, public and private.  But when I select a private one the message shows "This is not a valid source path / URL", and the details say that authentication failed.  Here's what I know:

  • This all used to work as recently as a month ago.  Sigh.
  • I've updated SourceTree and the embedded Git
  • There's only one configured account and it's set to default
  • Clearing saved passwords didn't help

This is on Windows, in case that matters.  Stuck!

1 answer

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4 votes
Answer accepted
Tom Smith June 11, 2021

Ok, I resolved (?) this as follows, adapting one of the password-clearing tips:

  1. Changed authentication for the account from basic to OAuth, sign in
  2. Close SourceTree
  3. Remove the file C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\Atlassian\SourceTree\passwd
  4. Start SourceTree
  5. Do a pull or something else that requires authentication.  Even though the OAuth token is current you are still prompted for a password here.
  6. Paste in your Personal Access Token for the password

And you're back up.  My mac configuration did not have this issue, and it's not using a PAT anywhere.  It was at OAuth already, which is the main reason I did step 1 to get them consistent.

But it looks like there is a super-double-secret password storage that is invisible and separate from what you see in the Accounts section.   Urp.

Lester Bloom March 13, 2022

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your solution. I spent hours trying to get my new install working. The "delete the passwd file" step fixed me up. Cheers

Nikolas Nikolaou February 1, 2023

Thank you so much. I've been struggling with this for ages. You are a hero.

ko cho
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