Could not create work tree dir 'example.com'.: Permission denied

I have got a virtual private server with nginx Virtual Hosts setup (Server Blocks).

I've installed Git and got my ssh keys authenticated with GitHub.

I have my website running in

 ~/var/www/example.com/public_html/

I tried to run:

git clone [email protected]:example/example.co.uk.git

to pull my files on GitHub to the /public_html/ directory but I get the error:

fatal: could not create work tree dir 'example.com'.: Permission denied

I've followed this tutorial including the same issue he has mentioned on the page, but it still won't work: http://machiine.com/2013/pulling-a-git-repo-from-github-to-your-ubuntu-server/

I'm completely new to this, so your help would be much appreciated!

Solution 1:

I think you don't have your permissions set up correctly for /var/www Change the ownership of the folder.

sudo chown -R $USER /var/www

Solution 2:

Turns out the problem was in the permission. I fix it with the following command

sudo chown -R $USER /var/www

Please make sure with the $USER variable. I tested and worked on Ubuntu Distro

Solution 3:

I was facing the same issue but it was not a permission issue.

When you are doing git clone it will create try to create replica of the respository structure.

When its trying to create the folder/directory with same name and path in your local os process is not allowing to do so and hence the error. There was "background" java process running in Task-manager which was accessing the resource of the directory(folder) and hence it was showing as permission denied for git operations. I have killed those process and that solved my problem. Cheers!!

Solution 4:

I was facing same issue then I read first few lines of this question and I realised that I was trying to run command at the root directory of my bash profile instead of CD/my work project folder. I switched back to my work folder and able to clone the project successfully

Solution 5:

You should logged in not as "root" user.

Or assign permission to your "current_user" to do this by using following command

sudo chown -R username.www-data /var/www

sudo chmod -R +rwx /var/www