 <p>Did you check <code>/var/log/messages</code> on your server?<br> May be the username 'git' does not work properly: From the <a href="http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories-the-easy-and-secure-way" rel="nofollow noreferrer">comments of Gitosis</a>,</p> <p>if you look at the authorized_key file you will see that it did not import the name of the system that key was generated on but the name of the server box.</p> <p>Example: using a username of “git” resulted in this in the authorized key</p> <pre><code>root@git-repo:/home/git/.ssh# cat authorized_keys command=”gitosis-serve root@git-repo” </code></pre> <p>After changing to user name “gitosis” it looks like this </p> <pre><code>root@git-repo:/home/gitosis/.ssh# cat authorized_keys command=”gitosis-serve myuser@mylocalbox”, </code></pre> <p>To fix I created a user gitosis with home dir of /home/gitosis and ran the git-init script again.</p> <pre><code>sudo -H -u gitosis gitosis-init &lt; /tmp/id_rsa.pub sudo chmod 755 /home/gitosis/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/hooks/post-update </code></pre> <p>then, on local box.. </p> <pre><code>git clone gitosis@YOUR_SERVER_HOSTNAME:gitosis-admin.git </code></pre>