Encountering .netrc parse error while running CI/CD pipeline

Issue

CI/CD pipelines using .netrc for authentication credentials can encounter the following errors if they use libcurl 8.11.0.

fatal: unable to access 'https://<URL>/<PROJECT>/': .netrc parser error

Environment

  • Impacted offerings:

    • GitLab.com
    • GitLab Self-Managed

  • Impacted versions:

    • libcurl 8.11.0

Cause

This is related to this curl bug: git fetch fails .netrc parse with libcurl 8.11.0

To identify what version of libcurl you are running you can use the command:

# curl --version
curl 8.11.0 (x86_64-alpine-linux-musl) libcurl/8.11.0 OpenSSL/3.3.2 zlib/1.3.1 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.6 c-ares/1.33.1 libidn2/2.3.7 libpsl/0.21.5 nghttp2/1.62.1
Release-Date: 2024-11-06
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher gophers http https imap imaps ipfs ipns mqtt pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp ws wss
Features: alt-svc AsynchDNS brotli HSTS HTTP2 HTTPS-proxy IDN IPv6 Largefile libz NTLM PSL SSL threadsafe TLS-SRP UnixSockets zstd

Workaround

  1. Pin to an older version of curl, libcurl, or git in your pipeline. For example:
apk add --no-cache "curl<=8.10.1"
  1. If using docker images to run your pipeline with the updated libcurl dependency, try pinning it to an older version. For example:
image: golang:1.23-alpine3.19

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