Troubleshooting GitHub Actions: Overcoming Permission Issues When Committing Files

Implementing automated workflows with GitHub Actions can streamline your development process, especially for tasks like scraping data and updating content dynamically. However, it’s common to encounter permission-related obstacles when attempting to push changes back to your repository. Here’s an overview of a typical scenario and strategies to resolve these issues effectively.

Understanding the Setup

In this case, a developer has created a web scraper that retrieves information from an external calendar, stores it in a JSON file, and then updates an HTML site accordingly. To automate this process, they rely on GitHub Actions, which runs on a scheduled or event-driven basis to scrape data and commit updates.

The Challenge: Permission Denied During Commit

Despite configuring a token for authentication, the workflow consistently encounters errors during the commit phase. The error logs indicate that the bot account, github-actions[bot], lacks sufficient permissions to push changes to the repository. A typical error message looks like:

remote: Permission to (repository) denied to github-actions[bot].
fatal: unable to access '(repository URL)': The requested URL returned error: 403

Possible Causes and Solutions

1. Verify the Token Configuration

2. Ensure that the GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) has the correct scopes, including repo (for private repositories) or public repository access.

3. When setting up secrets, confirm that the secret storing the token is correctly referenced in your workflow YAML.

4. Use the Proper Authentication Method

5. If you’re using a PAT, set it up as a secret (e.g., GITHUB_TOKEN or custom secret) and authenticate Git commands with it.

6. For example, in your workflow, you can configure Git as follows:

   yaml
- name: Set up Git
run: |
git config --global user.name "github-actions[bot]"
git config --global user.email "github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"
- name: Commit changes
run: |
git add .
git commit -m "Update JSON data"
git push origin main
env:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

7. Note: GITHUB_TOKEN is automatically provided in GitHub workflows and has permission scopes limited to the repository. For more extensive permissions, a Personal Access Token with wider