github: server certificate verification failed

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2016: Make sure first that you have certificates installed on your Debian in /etc/ssl/certs.

If not, reinstall them:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates

Since that package does not include root certificates, add:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/cacert.org
sudo wget -P /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/cacert.org http://www.cacert.org/certs/root.crt http://www.cacert.org/certs/class3.crt
sudo update-ca-certificates

Make sure your git does reference those CA:

git config --global http.sslCAinfo /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

Jason C mentions another potential cause (in the comments):

It was the clock. The NTP server was down, the system clock wasn’t set properly, I didn’t notice or think to check initially, and the incorrect time was causing verification to fail.

Certificates are time sensitive.

2022: Auspex adds in the comments:

ca-certificates does indeed contain root certificates.
It doesn’t contain the CAcert root certificates.

This might have been a good answer 6 1/2 years ago, but those certificates were suspect way back then and haven’t improved.
There’s a reason they’re not in the ca-certificates package.

These days we have LetsEncrypt, so everyone has certificates with reliable auditing and nobody needs to rely on CAcert.

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