Re: git no longer prompting for password

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 24, 2012, 21:25 UTC
Message-ID: <20120824212501.GA16285@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <5037E1D0.6030900@gmail.com>

On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 09:19:28PM +0100, Iain Paton wrote:

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> A recent update to git 1.7.12 from 1.7.3.5 seems to have changed
> something - trying to push to a smart http backend no longer prompts
> for a password and hence fails the server auth.
> [...]
> Backtracking through the versions I've skipped and this doesn't seem
> to be a new problem, client side up to 1.7.7.7 works, 1.7.8 onwards
> don't. Server side version doesn't seem to make a difference.

There was some work in v1.7.8 to avoid prompting for a password when it is not necessary; I suspect this is a fallout of that.

You could try bisecting the bug. My guess is that you will end up at commit 986bbc0 (http: don't always prompt for password, 2011-11-04).

> user@fubar01:~/test# git --version
> git version 1.7.7.7
> user@fubar01:~/test# git push http://ipaton@10.0.0.1/git/test.git master
> Password:

As per the discussion in 986bbc0, this is actually prompting you before git makes any request. Whereas here:

> user@fubar01:~/test# git --version
> git version 1.7.8
> user@fubar01:~/test# git push http://ipaton@10.0.0.1/git/test.git master --verbose

We should get an HTTP 401 from the server, then prompt, then retry. What's weird is that it sort of works:

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> Pushing to http://ipaton@10.0.0.1/git/test.git
> Counting objects: 6, done.
> Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
> Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
> Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 491 bytes, done.
> Total 5 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
> error: RPC failed; result=22, HTTP code = 401
> fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
> fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

It's like the initial http requests do not get a 401, and the push proceeds, and then some later request causes a 401 when we do not expect it. Which is doubly odd, since we should also be able to handle that case (the first 401 we get should cause us to ask for a password).

Can you show us the result of running with GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1? I'd really like to see which requests are being made with and without authentication.

> Looking at changelogs for 1.7.8 and I'm not really seeing anything
> that says I need to do something different.

No, you shouldn't need to do anything different. I'd suspect the weirdness you are seeing is from a credential helper trying to supply a blank password, except that you would have to have configured one manually for it to run (I assume you are not on a shared machine where somebody might have tweaked /etc/gitconfig or anything like that).

-Peff