Failed pushing to Github Container Registry

Question

I am using GitHub workflows to push a small package to a private GH container registry. Yesterday most of my workflows went through, but suddenly they stop working. I am not aware of any recent setting changes.

I am using {{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}} with Workflow write permissions enabled.

I replaced my actual organization name with test-user for privacy reasons.

buildx failed with: ERROR: failed to solve: failed to push test-user/bar:1.8.2:
    failed to authorize: failed to fetch oauth token: unexpected status: 401 Unauthorized

This is an extract of my workflow file:

      - name: Login to Docker registry
        uses: docker/login-action@v2
        with:
          registry: ghcr.io
          username: ${{ github.repository_owner }}
          password: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

... 

      - name: Build and push
        uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
        with:
          context: .
          push: true
          tags: ${{ steps.meta.outputs.tags }}
          labels: ${{ steps.meta.outputs.labels }}

Any idea what could trigger the 401?

Answer 1

Make sure you are only pushing images with the ghcr.io/ prefix in the name. Otherwise, it will try to push to docker hub and fail if you haven't used the login action to login to docker hub.