Can’t clone from Bitbucket – Get stuck at “Cloning into…”

git clone [repository] [local path]

If your working directory is your desired destination, simply put a .

$ git clone git@repo-site.com .

Why does it not work

http://localhost:3333/path/to/repo.git

This fails because the URL's hostname is different (localhost vs server2), and as a result the server uses a different configuration.

All HTTP clients send the requested hostname to the server, and the server may choose from several configurations (virtual hosts) based on that name. This is how many websites (often hundreds) can share the same IP address at a hosting provider.

localhost:3333/path/to/repo.git

This fails because it's not an HTTP URL, or in fact any URL at all. (Git is not a web browser and doesn't assume http:// by default.)

Instead it's an rcp-style SSH address in the form [user@]host:path. You might have seen it earlier as git@github.com:foo/bar.git, where the ssh@ prefix is really just a SSH username.

Git treats it as equivalent to ssh://[user@]host[:port]/path URLs, except the rcp-style addresses do not have a port field at all.

What to do

curl, the HTTP client used by Git, supports SOCKS proxies as provided by ssh -D dynamic tunnel.

1. Set up a dynamic (SOCKS) tunnel with:

   ssh username@serverA -D 1080 -N
   

2. Configure Git to use it as a proxy:

   Globally (or per-repository):

   git config [--global] http.proxy socks5://localhost:1080
   

   For a single command:

   git -c http.proxy=socks5://localhost:1080 clone http://serverB/repo.git
   

The socks5 and socks4 protocols perform DNS resolution on the client side, while socks5h and socks4a pass all hostnames through SOCKS to the SSH server.