Workflows fail with fatal: Cannot prompt because user interactivity has been disabled.

[andrzejressel]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Actions Runner

Discussion Details

Hi,,

Today my workflows started failing with following message:

Cloning into '/home/runner/work/pulumi-gestalt/pulumi-gestalt/external/pulumi'...
  Cloning into '/home/runner/work/pulumi-gestalt/pulumi-gestalt/external/pulumi-java'...
  Error: fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com/': terminal prompts disabled
  Error: fatal: expected flush after ref listing
  Unable to fetch in submodule path 'external/pulumi'; trying to directly fetch ae2e269861eabd2b692984e7286bec78777ba352:
  From https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi
   * branch              ae2e269861eabd2b692984e7286bec78777ba352 -> FETCH_HEAD
  Submodule path 'external/pulumi': checked out 'ae2e269861eabd2b692984e7286bec78777ba352'
  Error: fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com/': terminal prompts disabled
  Error: fatal: expected flush after ref listing
  Error: fatal: Fetched in submodule path 'external/pulumi-java', but it did not contain ecfc8b0b9b44eb0ef6ca60cfb2e4c0f55fa4810e. Direct fetching of that commit failed.
  Error: The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 128

across multiple workflows:

• https://github.com/andrzejressel/pulumi-gestalt/actions/runs/26328955765/job/77513573186
• https://github.com/andrzejressel/pulumi-gestalt/actions/runs/26329078749
• https://github.com/andrzejressel/pulumi-gestalt/actions/runs/26329078748/job/77511899408
• https://github.com/andrzejressel/pulumi-gestalt/actions/runs/26330003086/job/77514363070
• https://github.com/andrzejressel/pulumi-gestalt/actions/runs/26331143865/job/77517366095

I don't see anything on https://www.githubstatus.com/

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[DEATHGOD89]

This error usually occurs when GitHub Actions is trying to clone a private repository or submodule without authentication.

A few things to check:

1. Verify that all submodules are accessible to the workflow.
2. Ensure the repository has permission to access the private submodule.
3. Use a Personal Access Token (PAT) or GitHub token when checking out private submodules.
4. If using actions/checkout, try:

- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    submodules: recursive
    token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

If the submodule belongs to another private repository, a PAT with appropriate repository permissions may be required.

Could you confirm whether the referenced submodules are public or private?

[sdcb]

I'm referencing a public repository(https://github.com/sdcb/PaddleSharp -> https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/Paddle), and happens this issue quite a few times:
https://github.com/sdcb/PaddleSharp/actions/runs/26329153402/job/77512089353
https://github.com/sdcb/PaddleSharp/actions/runs/26331624080/job/77518569127

[sdcb]

I also faced same issue, I'm referencing a public repository, this issue only happens recently.

[andrzejressel]

I've run ~200-300 jobs and they all succeeded. I guess the issue is fixed.