git behind proxy: remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout

Question

When trying to clone ANY repository via https from github, we get:

git clone https://github.com/rails/rails.git
Cloning into rails...
remote HEAD refers to nonex         


        

Answer 1

A workaround found at the linked Ubuntu bug:

add the following to ~/.gitconfig or /etc/gitconfig

# Workaround for bug when using SSL and HTTP proxy (LP #940431)
[url "http://"]
 insteadOf = "https://"

No longer necessary starting with 12.04.

Answer 2

the packages noted above can be found here:

• http://packages.ubuntu.com/en/precise/amd64/libp11-kit0/download
• http://packages.ubuntu.com/en/precise/amd64/libgnutls26/download
• http://packages.ubuntu.com/en/precise/amd64/libcurl3-gnutls/download

I used these versions and was able to use git behind a proxy without issue:

$ sudo dpkg -i libp11-kit0_0.10-1_amd64.deb libgnutls26_2.12.14-5ubuntu2_amd64.deb libcurl3-gnutls_7.22.0-3ubuntu2_amd64.deb

Answer 3

I've stumbled across the solution to this problem via this post:

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/185459

The issue is apparently a bug in the libcurl version installed in Ubuntu server 11.04. Simply running apt-get install libcurl3-gnutls was not sufficient to solve the problem since it simply reported the latest version was already installed.

To solve the problem, I had to manually install the latest libcurl3-gnutls, and two dependencies, as seen below (obviously, after having downloaded them to my system first):

sudo dpkg -i libp11-kit0_0.6-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgnutls26_2.12.14-3_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libcurl3-gnutls_7.22.0-3ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Hope this helps someone.

Answer 4

Another simple solution would be:

regressing libcurl3 from 7.21.0 to 7.19.5.

Download it from here:

amd64: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/30289951/libcurl3-gnutls_7.19.5-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

i386: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/30287711/libcurl3-gnutls_7.19.5-1ubuntu2_i386.deb