Error when using Git credential helper with gnome-keyring as Sudo

Beside the use of sudo, note that in 2016, libgnome-keyring is specific to GNOME and is now deprecated (since January 2014, actually).

2022 option: git-credential-manager

Microsoft provides a cross-platform credential helper named GCM (Git Credential Manager), which you can install (no need to build it) and configure:

git-credential-manager-core configure

You will need Git 2.27+ to use it.


2016 option: git-credential-libsecret

Git 2.11+ (Q4 2016) included a new credential helper using libsecret.

See commit 87d1353 (09 Oct 2016) by Mantas Mikulėnas (grawity).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit bfe800c, 26 Oct 2016)

A new credential helper that talks via "libsecret" with implementations of XDG Secret Service API has been added to contrib/credential/.

it uses libsecret which can support other implementations of XDG Secret Service API.

But in 2022, this is no longer needed. See above


As noted by mati865 in the comments:

It should be noted that some distros like Arch and Fedora provide helpers available as both binary and source.

  • Libsecret binary on Arch: /usr/lib/git-core/git-credential-libsecret, and
  • Libsecret binary on Fedora: /usr/libexec/git-core/git-credential-libsecret.

Note: As @rugk adds in the comments, for Fedora and Git v2.25.2-1 or higher, you need to install an extra package with that binary, because it has been split from the main git package:

dnf install git-credential-libsecret

Using sudo runs the command as root. It's like asking your sysadmin, if you have one, to run a command for you. The root user is not meant to do anything development-related, and therefore git is not meant to be used as root.

Once you run a command as another user (root or any other), it is expected that this other user cannot communicate normally with your usual user (in particular, it doesn't find your gnome-keyring-daemon here).

So, the answer is: "don't do that". If you really need to clone in a particular directory, give yourself permissions on that directory as suggested in CodeWizard's answer. Actually, if you need to clone in a directory where you don't have permission, ask yourself whether you are doing something wrong: in principle, this shouldn't happen (my guess is: you already used sudo too much in the past and this is the reason why you have um-writable directories here and there).


I sometimes need to run sudo git clone since sometimes the directory where I need to make a clone requires it. Any help would be appreciated

The folder in which you try to clone the repository into was created by root so you dont have permission to write or to create folder under it unless you are root (sudo), set the permissions (chmod or chown) and you will be able to clone into the folder.

chmod 755 /path