Git pushing to a private repo

I have been working on my local on a web app and I was ask to push it to an empty(only read me file on it) private repo created just for this project. I'm new to git and I'm having trouble doing so.

Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?

I first navigate to the main folder of the app in my local using command line and initialize git. After, I try cloning the remote repo with:

git clone git://github.com/somename/Web-App.git

but I get the error:

Cloning into 'Web-App'... fatal: remote error: Repository not found.

I know the repo is there.. Do I actually need to clone or pull from that remote first or is there a way to just push to that repo.

Again, all I'm trying to do is to get the files that I have in my local pushed to a specific repo that I was given access to.

I will really appreciate any help.


Let us say 'yourWebApp' is the folder you have your local web app. Change it to the directory

cd 'yourWebApp'

Init git in the folder

git init

Now add your github url as a remote

git remote add origin git://github.com/somename/Web-App.git

Here origin is the short name for your url

Now pull the read me file from the github repo

 git pull origin master

Now push your web app to the github repository

git push origin master

Here it is assumed that you are in your master, the default branch

Here pulling your readme files is necessary to merge the readme file with your local work. If your github repository is empty, you can skip the pull and directly push to your github repository.

On the other hand, if you want to use clone, there is no need to init as clone automatically sets up git in the directory. clone also sets your remote git url. In that case, your workflow should be

 git clone https://github.com/path/to/your/repo
 make some changes
 git add your changes
 git commit your changes
 git push

I was facing the same problem. I was able to solve this by removing old credentials from windows.

  1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu
  2. Go to User Accounts -> Credential Manager -> Manage Windows Credentials
  3. Delete any credentials related to Git or GitHub

Once I did this, it started working again.


To push to a private repository, you probably want to fork it, push your changes to your copy (which will stay private), and then create a pull request. When I tried to push directly to a private repository, I got the puzzling "remote: Repository not found. fatal" message, even though I could pull just fine.