git - fatal: The current branch master has no upstream branch

Question

I'm trying to push one of my projects to github, and I keep getting this error:

peeplesoft@jane3:~/846156 (master) $ git push

fatal: The current branch master has no upstream branch.
To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use

     git push --set-upstream origin master

So I tried it and got this:

peeplesoft@jane3:~/846156 (master) $ git push --set-upstream origin master

fatal: Authentication failed

Another stackoverflow thread suggested I try the following, with disappointing results.

peeplesoft@jane3:~/846156 (master) $ git push -u origin master

fatal: Authentication failed

Then I tried this:

peeplesoft@jane3:~/846156 (master) $ git config remote.origin.push HEAD

peeplesoft@jane3:~/846156 (master) $ git push

fatal: Authentication failed

Any hints?

Answer 1

You fixed the push, but, independently of that push issue (which I explained in "Why do I need to explicitly push a new branch?": git push -u origin master or git push -u origin --all), you need now to resolve the authentication issue.

That depends on your url (ssh as in 'git@github.com/yourRepo, or https as in https://github.com/You/YourRepo)

For https url:

If your account is protected by the two-factor authentication, your regular password won't work (for https url), as explained here or here.

Same problem if your password contains special character (as in this answer)

If https doesn't work (because you don't want to generate a secondary key, a PAT: personal Access Token), then you can switch to ssh, as I have shown here.

---

As noted by qwerty in the comments, you can automatically create the branch of same name on the remote with:

git push -u origin head 

Why?

• HEAD (see your .gitHEAD file) has the refspec of the currently checked out branch (for example: ref: refs/heads/master)
• the default push policy is simple

Since the refpec used for this push is head: (no destination), a missing :<dst> means to update the same ref as the <src> (head, which is a branch).

That won't work if HEAD is detached though.