Permission denied when cloning git repository

Note: this fix works for Mac users

Incase of macOS 10.12.2 or later, you will need to modify your ~/.ssh/config file to automatically load keys into the ssh-agent and store passphrases in your keychain.

Host *
   AddKeysToAgent yes
   UseKeychain yes
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<your_id_rsa>

Add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent and store your passphrase in the keychain. If you created your key with a different name, or if you are adding an existing key that has a different name, replace id_rsa in the command with the name of your private key file.

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/<your_id_rsa>

For more information please review https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent

Your first error is because your user does not have access to write to /var/www/html . You could give your user permissions to do so.

Your second error when running as root, is likely that you have your ssh keys in your user home directory, not in /root/.ssh/ , or that your .ssh directory or the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub key file have improber permissions. ~/.ssh/ should have the permission bits 0700 , and should have ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub e.g. 0600