Git commits from unknown users in Bitbucket Cloud

Summary

This article details why you may see commits from unknown users within your repositories and provides instructions on how to map these to the correct users.

Diagnosis

• When checking your commit list, you may notice that some commits appear to be from users who are not members of your workspace.

• Often, a blank avatar will be displayed next to the commit, with no user account linked.

Cause

A commit's author is based on the email address a user has configured locally in their Git config:

• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup#_your_identity

When a commit is pushed to the remote repo, Bitbucket checks if there is a Bitbucket Cloud account whose primary email or verified email alias matches the commit author's email. If there is, this Bitbucket user is displayed as the commit author.

If there is no Bitbucket Cloud account whose primary email or verified email alias matches the commit author's email, then Bitbucket shows Unknown user as the commit's author.

Please remember that the commit's author has nothing to do with authentication. Pushing a commit to a Bitbucket repo is only possible for users with at least write access to the repo, and authentication is done either with a user's SSH keys, a username and an app password, or an access token. The commit author is not used for authentication.

Solution

1. Navigate to the commit and click the ellipsis (...) >  View Raw Commit to check the recorded username/email address to see if there is any identifiable information that may reveal who this user might be 

2. You may also execute the following command to check the specific commit hash (replace with the actual hash) and compare the author/committer:

   // Compare author/committer: git cat-file -p commithash

3. If you still can't figure out who the commit author is, ask your workspace members to check the Git configuration on their computer and see if they have set the email address from Steps 1 and 2. They can check that with the command:

   git config --global --list

4. The user who is using this email address in their Git config can change it to match the email address of their Bitbucket account with the command:

   git config --global user.email "some-username@example.com"

   They can also adjust the name (if it is wrong) with the command:

   git config --global user.name "FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME"

   This will ensure that any future commits made by this user will be mapped to their Bitbucket account when pushed to the remote repo.

5. There are two ways to map existing commits with the wrong author email to the correct Bitbucket user:

   • The user using an incorrect email address as the commit author can add this email address as an email alias to their Bitbucket Cloud account and verify it. This is only possible if the existing account uses this email address and the user can access the email inbox.

   • A repository admin can map existing commits to username aliases.