Git Bash returns "fatal: remote error: CAPTCHA required" on only 1, but not all, remote repos

[Christopher Cody]

I've got a strange one.

Using Git Bash, trying to clone a remote repo to a local directory returns:

fatal: remote error: CAPTCHA required

Your Bitbucket account has been locked. To unlock it and log in again you must

solve a CAPTCHA. This is typically caused by too many attempts to login with an

incorrect password. The account lock prevents your SCM client from accessing

Bitbucket and its mirrors until it is solved, even if you enter your password

correctly.

If you are currently logged in to Bitbucket via a browser you may need to

logout and then log back in in order to solve the CAPTCHA.

Visit Bitbucket at https://git.xxx.yyy for more details.

When I try to clone a different project to my local drive, it works perfectly.  

https://git.xxx.yyy represents our company's BitBucket server that manages hundreds of divisions' projects.  We authenticate against Active Directory and use PIV cards.  So there should not be a CAPTCHA dialog anywhere in the stream.

So one project works, the other doesn't: same server, same user (me), same global Git configuration settings (which contain my email address and user name), same instance of Git Bash.

Our BitBucket administrators haven't seen this before.

I ended up creating an access token on the BitBucket server to see if a different type of authentication would work.  The working project still works and the non-working project still doesn't.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? It's about to break me.

Thanks!

[Nate Hansen]

The gut reaction here is that your Bitbucket server appears to be quite upset with your credentials. It could be permission issue, or as the message suggests your account has been locked. But that message is generated from the server. Ideally the Admins could up the logging in that space, or review existing logs.

I have seen some mention that recent password changes can cause Bitbucket (used to be known as stash, when in the cloud) will show that message if you have a git plugin for tools like eclipse that hammer the server with bad passwords. It suggests you log in via a web-browser to re-authenticate. Bitbucket almost entirely rolled their own git server protocol so it may be outside of the expertise of this group. Let us know what the admins say about your account status.

We use bitbucket server (not cloud) so we use SSH public keys with git bash and don't rely on the https authentication. I would suggest switching to SSH since I find SSH public private keys more reliable.

[Christopher Cody]

Thanks very much Nate for your reply. 

The issue turned out to be that our network was changed such that the Active Directory's alias was no longer being recognized as the authenticating user.  This caused BitBucket to think I didn't have an account.  

One of our projects was set to Public access (where it enables such users to access the project) and the other project was set to private access (the Enable check box on the Project permissions page was unchecked). 

The switch to not using the alias was unannounced, so difficult to track down.

Thanks again for responding so quickly.