Git clone, ssh: Could not resolve hostname

Now this was annoying. I tried a git clone ssh://user@my.host:/path/to/repository and it failed with

Initialized empty Git repository in /current/path/repository/.git/
ssh: Could not resolve hostname my.host:: Name or service not known
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

The solution was rather easy, see man 1 git-clone. A valid git clone command looks like this:

git clone ssh://username@host.xz/absolute/path/to/repo.git/

An alternative notation that allows for relative paths is

git clone username@host.xz:relative/path/to/repo.git/

The problem with the command I used initially was that I tried to use an scp-like syntax.

Published on April 6, 2009 at 5:06 p.m. by Nicolas and tagged git, development. You can follow the discussion with the comment feed for this post.

5 comments

Jesse wrote this comment on Sept. 5, 2010, 4:17 p.m.

Thanks for this :-)

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Tianon Gravi wrote this comment on Sept. 23, 2010, 6 a.m.

By the way, if you had dropped the "ssh://" prefix then your original example would have worked.

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- nicolas wrote this comment on Sept. 23, 2010, 12:40 p.m.
  
  Oh, nice, thanks :-)
  
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John wrote this comment on Oct. 24, 2010, 11:28 p.m.

Thanks for sharing this Nicolas and Tianon. Nice to be able to Google relevant information. :)

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Martin de Keijzer wrote this comment on Jan. 15, 2011, 4:15 p.m.

You just saved my day! I had my "Doh!"-moment as well now.

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