Why am I unable to authenticate with the Git Plugin on Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Article ID:204380720
1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

  • Receiving "(Failed to connect to repository : Failed to connect to …​ using credentials (status = 401))" errors when trying to…​ (not sure what jenkins/plugin is doing commit, poll, etc…​)

  • The Git Plugin is unable to authenticate with RHEL6

Environment

  • git < 1.7.9

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  • CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise

  • Git Plugin

Resolution

Ultimately, you need to be running with git => 1.7.9.

Red Hat makes a version of git > 1.7.9 available through its Developer Toolset. The solution is to install RHT developer toolset, which includes git 1.8.x:

Root Cause

RHEL 6.x includes git client version 1.7.1 by default. This version of git was shipped in April, 2010. The Jenkins git-plugin requires at least git version 1.7.9 but preferably git 1.8.x or higher. One issue with this older version of git is that it is not compatible with Jenkins’s git-plugin and the credentials-api.