Clone private git repo to remote host using sudo

Question

I would like to run the following command:

ssh -A josh@remote_ip sudo git clone [email protected]:private/private-repo.git /home/ec2-user/private-repo

but I get an error:

Cloning into '/home/ec2-user/private-repo'...
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

The command works when I want to clone into a directory I own (~/private-repo) without sudo. The command doesn't work if I include sudo into a directory I already own.

Since I need to use sudo to write into the other user's directory, how can I get this command to work? Logging in as ec2-user is not a possible solution.

When you run git with sudo, ssh is not looking in ~josh/.ssh for the key any more; it's looking in ~root/.ssh. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 21:41
The simplest solution will be to clone to a directory you have access to, then use sudo to move it to the correct location. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 21:48
Can you use sudo to run as ec2-user instead? You can create a dedicated key for that user and allow it to access the private repository using that key. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 21:50
@chepner the end goal is to run this command using Ansible, where I already tried running it as ec2-user there with no luck. Your initial comment about ssh looking in ~root/.ssh was very helpful and allowed me to find what I think is the best solution for my problem — Josh K
– Josh K, Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 22:01

Josh K · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-13 21:59:34Z

0

Thank you to @chepner for pointing me in the direction of the issue: my ssh key does not get passed to ~root/.ssh when I use sudo.

To fix this, I used visudo to add this line to my /etc/sudoers file:

Defaults    env_keep += "SSH_AUTH_SOCK"

Source

answered Sep 13, 2022 at 21:59

Josh K

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