Re: `guix pull` of an ssh channel fails

[Phil <phil@beadling.co.uk>]

Hi,

Bone Baboon writes:

> I received help from civodul on #guix.  They suggested I run
> `ssh-agent`.

Yes this is necessary - Guix will only read a key from an agent not a file.

>
> After running `ssh-agent` and using the environment variables it outputs
> in the command `SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-XXXXXXLfu5ES/agent.18550
> SSH_AGENT_PID=18551 guix pull` I am no longer getting this error message
> "guix pull: error: Git error: error authenticating: no auth sock
> variable".

As a side note check-out "keychain" as much nicer way of automating
ssh-agent management.

>
> However I now get this error message "guix pull: error: Git error:
> Failed to retrieve list of SSH authentication methods: Failed getting
> response`".

When I have seen this error it means the SSH key in the ssh-agent is not
permissioned to read the contents of the git repo over SSH, containing either the
channel itself or any other repos referenced in the channel that you hold
locally.  I use BitBucket not vanilla Git - the solution in BitBucket is
to add the public key of the SSH key in your agent to your account with
read priviledges.  If you happen to be using GitHub you'll need to add
your key here, I think - it's the same idea: https://github.com/settings/ssh/new

One last test you can do is can you git clone your channel from the
console?  My guess is this won't work if Guix is also having problems -
but you can then reduce the problem to one of git not guix.