The Problem

When I change a public repository of mine in github to private via:
Settings -> Options -> Danger Zone -> Make this repository private

I get an error in Jenkins when running Scan Multibranch Pipeline Now.
Viewing the logs I can see the following error:

...
ERROR: [Wed Jun 26 20:28:41 UTC 2019] Could not update folder level actions from source eeeaef40-37d1-45a6-8e84-7652b9caeb03
hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "git ls-remote git://github.com/myuser/myProject.git" returned status code 128:
stdout: 
stderr: fatal: remote error: 
  Repository not found.
...
FATAL: Failed to recompute children of Markdown-pipeline
hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "git ls-remote git://github.com/myuser/myProject.git" returned status code 128:
stdout: 
stderr: fatal: remote error: 
  Repository not found.
...

No scanning is taking place to update the job with new branch events or push events.
None of the branches in my pipeline will build if I try to build them manually.

The Background

  • I have successfully configured a github personal access token (Click Avatar -> Settings -> Developer Settings -> Personal Access Tokens)
  • My token permissions are limited to appropriate ones: repo (repo:status, repo_deployment, public_repo, repo:invite) and admin:repo_hook (write:repo_hook, read:repo_hook).
  • I am the sole owner of the public repository.
  • I have 2-Factor Authentication (2-FA or Multi-factor authentication-MFA) configured on my account.
  • I have a jenkinsfile configured with a build stage to check out my project from the repository
  • I also have a seed job in the form of a groovy script to seed my multibranch pipeline job that will use the jenkinsfile

Jenkinsfile build stage:

stage('build') {
    steps {
        git credentialsId: 'github_token', url: 'git://github.com/myuser/myproject.git', branch: '${BRANCH_NAME}'
        sh 'mvn --version'
        sh 'mvn clean install'
    }
}

Seed job setup:

branchSources {
    git {
        remote('git://github.com/myuser/myproject.git')

        credentialsId("github_token")
    }
}

The Solution

I remembered having a similar issue with IntelliJ’s git operations a while back and stumbled on this post on their support page.

Due to the use of 2FA on my account the git command line client cannot login when using the HTTPS access method unless I use a personal access token, which I already have.

But I noticed that I was using the git:// protocol in my calls and not HTTPS, so figured I should try switching the protocol to HTTPS with the personal access token.

So to enable repository scanning I updated my groovy seed job to use the https protocol:

branchSources {
    git {
        remote('https://github.com/myuser/myProject.git')

        credentialsId("github_token")
    }
}

And for my branches in the jenkinsfile pipeline I also switched the build stage:

stage('build') {
    steps {
        git credentialsId: 'github_token', url: 'https://github.com/myuser/myproject.git', branch: '${BRANCH_NAME}'
        sh 'mvn --version'
        sh 'mvn clean install'
    }
}

Now I am able to perform repository scanning on a private repo.