Problem cloning / fetching repository using Git plugin for Hudson on Windows

Question

Before anybody shoots me down for this - I have already checked every appropriate thread and still not found a solution to my problem.

I have Hudson with git plugin installed on windows server (not my choice) and Hudson runs as a service. Git/bin is on the path. However I cannot clone the repository. Here is a shortened display of the console output:

Started by user anonymous
Checkout:workspace / C:\.hudson\jobs\sdf\workspace - hudson.remoting.LocalChannel@65394b
Last Built Revision: Revision 74200b32314231a5efdadd87bf36b42ec145c720 (origin/master)
Checkout:workspace / C:\.hudson\jobs\sdf\workspace - hudson.remoting.LocalChannel@65394b
Fetching changes from the remote Git repository
Fetching upstream changes from ssh://git.mccannlondon.co.uk/git/mccann_admin
[workspace] $ "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\git.exe" fetch -t ssh://git.mccannlondon.co.uk/git/mccann_admin +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
The server's host key is not cached in the registry. You
have no guarantee that the server is the computer you
think it is.
The server's rsa2 key fingerprint is:
ssh-rsa 2048 f1:48:2a:0a:d9:18:cf:2e:f2:8c:b3:25:7f:34:d5:34
Connection abandoned.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
ERROR: Problem fetching from origin / origin - could be unavailable. Continuing anyway

So it seems I need to authenticate the host however I'm not sure why hudson is starting the job as user anonymous when I have set the Administrator as owner of the hudson service.

Does anyone know:

• a) how to change hudson's run user? or
• b) connect to the remove computer with the same user account as hudson uses as to allow hudson to fetch?

If this has been posted before apologies but I spent a good few hours searching around and couldn't find anything.

Thanks

Lewis

Answer 1

This may be related to the question Git, Can’t clone repo on windows

The problem is that MSysGit starts PLink in the background, i.e. the terminal is not actually connected to the input of PLink. That means that you simply can't type anything into PLink.

You simply have to connect to the server once using PLink or PuTTY, answer Yes and from then on, you won't be asked again.

The tutorial from cletus can be helpful as well.

A good description of the issue can be found in this blog entry

the problem is that Hudson is a service and runs under the user "Local Service Account".

The next step is to add the trace manually the cache (a file) because I know you can do in Linux.
Wrong again, Windows does not have this cache as a file but uses the registry.
Searching in the register found an entry for my user (who had previously accessed the repository and added to the cache footprint) where the trace was stored and copied to HKEY_USERS so that users can access it.

The entry goes like this:

Key Name: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys
Class Name: NO CLASS
Last Write Time: 23.01.2009 - 18:35
Value 0
Name: dss@22:bla_bla.com
Type: REG_SZ
Data: 0xb477b...

From the command line, you can easily add the key as follows:

reg add HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys /v dss@22:bla_bla.com /d 0xb477b...

Now Hudson, run as a service, go happily and smoothly to the repository where the code.

Answer 2

The 'started by anonymous' is telling you which Hudson user started the job. If you haven't created any Hudson users, then everything is started by 'anonymous'

It is not related to which OS user is executing the process.

Answer 3

You asked how to change the user that Hudson runs as: you need to edit the service (Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services, double click the Hudson service and change the "Log On" to "This account").

Once the account is setup I make sure that the git server is in MINGW's (Git Bash's) ~hudson/.ssh/known_hosts, and that there's a ~hudson/.ssh/identity file in place. The only warning I have is that if you have cygwin installed on the box you need to make sure that %CYGWIN% is empty, otherwise you'll see key permission errors in the Hudson logs. My recommendation is that you simply set the CYGWIN environment variable to empty in Hudson.