Trying to git pull with error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied

It seems like the first one isn't working because your user doesn't have the permissions for changing that directory, and the second because your root user doesn't have the right SSH keys for accessing that git repository.

Depending on what you're trying to do, it might be better to clone the repository to a different directory, or maybe chown the current directory to have full access for your user

If you want to give the permission to the group,

sudo chmod g+w .git -R

worked best for me.

For MacOS

sudo chmod -R g+w .git 

Check if you have enough permissions on the .git/ directory. You should have write permissions. You can set them with the following command.

Go to your project folder:

chown -R youruser:yourgroup .git/

This is a UNIX permission problem. Do not use sudo for cloning the repository. You don't have the same ssh keys as root and you shouldn't work as root anyway. Try ls -la to find the permissions on the files and use chmod (or sudo chown) to fix them. Hope that helps.