Regenerated PAT

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

My PAT has expired and I was promoted to regenerate one. However, after regenerating the PAT, I am unable to do git push and am equally unable to use the new PAT to reclone already existing repositories. How do I proceed to work locally and push without being asked for my password every time I need to git push?

[jfullstackdev]

do you know how to use GitHub Desktop ? you can do that without using Git, if say, that is you only developing the app, or maybe you are in a team but say, you are the only assigned in one module, so you don't need to pull the changes from the other modules

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

I actually have github desktop and VS code. I am however not permitted to use it for the duration fo the course I am taking - we are only permitted to use our provided sandboxes which is a virtual machine

[airtower-luna]

What happens is probably that your old PAT is cached somewhere. You'll have to update that storage, or clear it so you'll be asked again.

Where that cache might be depends on:

• Your OS/desktop environment.
• The software you use. In particular, does it call Git, or have its own Git implementation and auth (e.g. Eclipse does this)?
• Your Git configuration, for example you might have configured Git credential storage (or something did that for you). Some people also embed tokens in remote URLs (which is generally a bad idea).

[airtower-luna]

If you have a command line, run git config --list and see if any of the options mentioned in the credential storage docs are set.

Otherwise I can't really help because I don't know that web environment. You might want to ask whoever is offering the course about that.

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

When run git config --list it gives me:
user.email
user.name

[airtower-luna]

Then you should really ask whoever is responsible for that sandbox. It's odd that a web-based course would ask you for a PAT anyway, it'd make more sense for them to use a GitHub App or OAuth to get access to the relevant repositories in your account. 🤔

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

Thanks for the advice. I have sent a message to our tutors. Hopefully, they will assist me.

[wisdom-jessey]

Please can you explain how you did it

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

Thanks for all the help. I figured out how to solve it using git remote set-url --delete to delete the old URL then git remote set-url --add to add the new URL
All good now

[airtower-luna]

That sounds like you actually put the PAT into the URL, which is less than advisable in terms of security. Or convenience, because as you noticed you have to update the URL every time you change your authentication. 😅

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

I only noticed this security measure now and its deficiencies. Probably done that way because the sandboxes given to us are just for school purposes.

[airtower-luna]

Really, that's a lot more reason not to store the token on disk. Sandbox or not, the PAT gives push access to your repositories. So if someone manages to steal it they can probably do a lot of damage.

[Franklin-Ngueiwoh]

Thanks for the help. I will make sure it is well protected.