Terraform Git Clone does not seems to work with GITHUB_TOKEN but works when used a PAT - github

Question

I am adding a Github actions workflow to execute terraform commands as part of the pipeline.
The terraform code refers refer to terraform modules from another repo as follows.
module <moduleName> {
source = "git::git#github.com:<orgName>/<moduleRepo>.git//<modulePath>?ref=<moduleTag>"
...
}
This will lead to fetching the code from given tag during terraform init command execution.
To ensure that https url is used instead of SSH git url. I am overriding the git config url as follows.
git config --global url."https://oauth2:$GITHUB_TOKEN#github.com/<orgName>/<moduleRepo>.git".insteadOf "ssh://git#github.com/<orgName>/<moduleRepo>.git"
But GITHUB_TOKEN does not allow git clone and this fails with the following error:
remote: Invalid username or password.
fatal: Authentication failed for
'https://github.com/<repoName>/<moduleRepo>.git/'
I also tried adding permission to the workflow for repositories as follows:
permissions:
repository-projects: read
The repo setting for action is set to : Allow all actions and reusable workflows
If I change the GITHUB_TOKEN with my PAT with repo permissions, then the workflow works without any issues.
Please let me know how to configure GITHUT_TOKEN with required permissions. I want to make it work with GITHUB_TOKEN rather than PAT.

Answer 1

Eventually I was able to figure out the issue. The GITHUB_TOKEN is made available to the Github Action workflow as a secret and not as an environment variable.
The issue was I was treating it as an environment variable and using it as such, which lead to the error.
I changed the workflow as follows to use it as a secret.
jobs:
<jobName>:
env:
GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
I updated the git config as follows to use the token properly:
git config --global url."https://oauth2:$GH_TOKEN#github.com/<orgName>/<moduleRepo>.git".insteadOf "ssh://git#github.com/<orgName>/<moduleRepo>.git"
The workflow now seems to work properly.
The usage is documented here: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/guides/getting-started-with-the-rest-api#authentication-example-for-github-actions
Adding my answer here to help others facing similar issue.