EC2: Cannot git clone at launch

Question

I am trying to git clone a private repository from GitHub on EC2 instance at launch.

What I have in my script(user data) is the following.

git clone -b branchname https://github.com/orgname/reponame.git /var/tmp/reponame

For some reason, this ends up

Cloning into '/var/tmp/reponame'...
fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address

but works fine when executed after launching the instance. (I have tested it right after the instance launch)

What would be the cause of this error?

Probably the network is not up yet. – Gerald Schneider Nov 02 '18 at 09:40 — Gerald Schneider, Nov 02 '18 at 09:40
When SSH is used instead of HTTPS, it works though – d-_-b Nov 02 '18 at 09:46 — d-_-b, Nov 02 '18 at 09:46

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 02 '18 at 10:40

2

You say it's a private repo - I guess that means it needs a username and password. How are you providing these?

If you have the credentials in e.g. /root/.git-credentials (as described here) and git clone still doesn't work it may be that $HOME isn't set in UserData script and therefore git doesn't find the credentials file.

Two options:

set HOME=/root before running git clone, or
save the .git-credentials file to / (as that's probably where is tries to find it when $HOME isn't set).

Hope that helps :)

answered Nov 02 '18 at 10:40

MLu

24,849
5
59
86

Thank you for the suggestion. `export HOME=/root` did the trick. – d-_-b Nov 05 '18 at 01:44
@d-_-b Great :) Care to accept the answer then? Thanks! – MLu Nov 05 '18 at 02:05

EC2: Cannot git clone at launch

1 Answers1