Rstudio.cloud suddenly not connecting to github for multiple students

[Stephen_Gosnell]

I teach a stats course using R via github classroom. Students had been using Rstudio.cloud successfully the first few weeks of the course, but over the last 2 weeks many have have lost the ability to push changes to github. They can still clone repositories and (mostly) commit, but attempts to push do not work. This seesm to only affect new repositories/projects (old ones still work fine).

They typically get requests for passwords (which I assume is just a relic from github allowing passwords), but this is happening even if new personal access tokens are made and checked or git credentials are updated. I've tried pushing from the terminal window, resetting PAT, resetting git name and email, etc but with no luck.

Error messages include

fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'rstudio-user@application-5934149-deployment-13603720-g4bn8.(none)' (still observed after multiple attempts to input git identity)

git push window:
error: unable to read askpass response from 'rpostback-askpass'
fatal: could not read Username for "https://github.com": No such device or address

Has anyone else had issues recently, or any thoughts on these errors?

Thanks,

Stephen

[mel]

Hi Stephen,

I'm sorry to hear that your students running into issues with pushing to GitHub. Could you send us/me a link to the space and links to some projects that are experiencing this issue? Having that should help us figure out what might be going on here.

Thanks so much, and sorry for the trouble,
Mel

[Stephen_Gosnell]

Hi Mel,

Thanks for response and sorry for delay. I had to get links from students.

One example is here: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__rstudio.cloud_project_3753865&d=DwICAA&c=dTXc8cCP8suVpClwB1HRHQACHN4UFMgL7MtSjCbKyts&r=I5BTzIh-w31xDRWxf1KzFeeRv7rSpJ4estqgW3HmtlM&m=sfkRfm8dGTbVLycqNIaBbglPDuecjUjTOAsFhTJp0CU&s=Nj92rGexIkDUY01ppqxLfnlt2uBOXa8lIsaUQAvZn1I&e=

I worked with the student again today to make a new token and set it, but according to github the token is never used. The student is stuck in a continuous loop of "push", "enter username/password"(which I assume is obsolete now), then attempt to update/reload token. We've tried multiple approaches but can't get the repository to push.

Thanks,

Stephen

[mel]

Thanks for the link, Stephen — having that is really helpful. We'll dig into this issue and let you know what we're able to find. Sorry again for the difficulty here.

Mel

[Stephen_Gosnell]

Another link here with similar issues: RStudio Cloud

[mel]

Hi Stephen,

Sorry for the delay on this, and thanks for these URLs. A couple of questions for you:

1. Are all the repositories your students are trying to push to private repositories?
2. Can they push to these repositories from outside of Cloud?
3. Are any students able to push to these repositories? Does this affect everyone in your class?

We're not able to reproduce this issue ourselves currently, so I don't have a clear fix for you yet. Last Wednesday we pushed out a patch that corrects some configuration for new projects that might be related to what you're seeing. If you create a new project and follow the same steps as before, are you/your students still seeing issues pushing to a repository?

Thanks for your patience and assistance while we get to the bottom of whatever is going on here.

Mel

[Stephen_Gosnell]

1. All repositories in the class are produced using github classroom, so they are private (so students can't share/find answers without help).
   2-3. I have students who are able to push to these repositories from the cloud and from installations of Rstudio, but no student is using both for a single repository.

This issue didn't start until early March. I assumed at first github tokens had expired, but that doesn't appear to be the issue. In regards to the recent change, one student emailed yesterday that a new assignment had worked (commit and push) but then immediately stopped working again (back to cycle with git identity and not pushing). I also know its happening to both free cloud accounts and those where students have paid for extra hours.

Thanks for looking into this,

Stephen

[mel]

Hi Stephen,

Sorry again for the delay on a response for this. We've been trying to reproduce your issue on side with no success yet.

A few more questions for you:

1. How are your students telling git who they are? What commands are they running? Is it something like this:

   $ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
   $ git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com
   

   or are they doing something else?

2. When your students create new projects, are they creating projects with existing git repositories in hand? That is, are they using the "Create Project from Git" functionality in RStudio Cloud? Or are they setting the repositories up after the fact?

RE: the errors you shared before:

git push window:
error: unable to read askpass response from 'rpostback-askpass'
fatal: could not read Username for "https://github.com": No such device or address

This is known to occur if a user cancels out of the username/password prompt that the IDE brings up. Is that what happened there?

And:

fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'rstudio-user@application-5934149-deployment-13603720-g4bn8.(none)' (still observed after multiple attempts to input git identity)

This was probably caused by the bug that has since been fixed for projects created after March 30th. Are your students still seeing this error for projects created in the last week? If so, can you please send us a link to the projects that exhibit this behavior so we can check them out?

For older projects that are still experiencing the "unable to push" issue, it might be that the git configuration is missing a step. Here are some commands that should help bring the config your students set up manually into the same shape as what a new project would get:

git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout 43200'

This is a bit of a long shot since we're not able to reproduce the issues your students are encountering, but maybe it will help.

Thank you so much for all of your time and patience while we figure this out. I hope the road is smoother for your students' Github integrations soon.

Mel

[Stephen_Gosnell]

Thanks for the reply.

1. Yes, they are using those commands.
2. Yes, the repositories exist on github then are cloned using the "Create Project from git"

Re.the errors...:I think sometimes they are cancelling out and just entering a personal access token when they get that message, then trying to push again. I've had that work before, but will remind them to not just skip the step. However, can you explain what the information is "doing"? I thought github wasn't accepting passwords anymore.

The last option looks the most promising. I'll let the students know. I only see them on Fridays and due to spring break won't have them in class again until 4/29, but I will follow up as soon as I can.

Thanks,

Stephen

[mbaynton]

Hi Stephen,
You're right, GitHub doesn't accept passwords anymore. The steps we've been using to attempt to reproduce your issue is to enter a github username at the username prompt, and then when prompted for the password, we enter a personal access token as if it was the password. Give that a try if you haven't already and let us know how it goes!

Thanks
Mike