Can t push to GitHub because of large file which I already deleted

Question

Currently I have   Empty GitHub repo SSH server repo  main  Local Repo   SSH server repo was the most up-to-date repo  production site  so I did a Git clone from there to local  I then tried to do a git push to GitHub   Everything went OK but then it said something about filename gz being too large for GitHub  I didn t need this file so I ran several Git commands to get rid of it from Git cache then pushed back to SSH server   I don t see the large file locally but it s still on SSH server even though git diff returns nothing and git push returns  Everything is up-to-date  - And even though the file is not visible in local repo when I try to push to GitHub I still get error about it      remote  error  File fpss tar gz is 135 17 MB  this exceeds GitHub s file size limit of 100 MB   I followed steps under  fixing the problem  listed on GitHub help so shouldn t that have been enough   How is the file still in the ether when it s not local or listed in git status diff push

User · Answer

I got the same problem and none of the answers work for me. I solved by the following steps:

1. Find which commit(s) contains the large file

git log --all -- 'large_file`

The bottom commit is the oldest commit in the result list.

2. Find the one just before the oldest.

git log

Suppose you got:

commit 3f7dd04a6e6dbdf1fff92df1f6344a06119d5d32

3. Git rebase

git rebase -i 3f7dd04a6e6dbdf1fff92df1f6344a06119d5d32

Tips:

List item
I just choose drop for the commits contains the large file.
You may meet conflicts during rebase fix them and use git rebase --continue to continue until you finish it.
If anything went wrong during rebase use git rebase --abort to cancel it.

User · Answer

Here s something I found super helpful if you ve already been messing around with your repo before you asked for help  First type   git status   After this  you should see something along the lines of   On branch master Your branch is ahead of  origin master  by 2 commits     use  git push  to publish your local commits   nothing to commit  working tree clean   The important part is the  2 commits   From here  go ahead and type in   git reset HEAD  lt HOWEVER MANY COMMITS YOU WERE BEHIND gt    So  for the example above  one would type   git reset HEAD 2   After you typed that  your  git status  should say   On branch master Your branch is up to date with  origin master    nothing to commit  working tree clean   From there  you can delete the large file  assuming you haven t already done so   and you should be able to re-commit everything without losing your work  I know this isn t a super fancy reply  but I hope it helps

User · Answer

git lfs migrate import --include  fpss tar gz    this should re-write your local commits with the new lfs refs   https   github com git-lfs git-lfs blob master docs man git-lfs-migrate 1 ronn utm source gitlfs site amp utm medium doc man migrate link amp utm campaign gitlfs examples

User · Answer

this worked for me  documentation from github Squashing Git Commits git reset origin master  git checkout master  amp  amp  git pull  git merge feature branch  git add   --all  git commit -m  your commit message    find documentation here

User · Answer

Make your local repo match the remote repo with  git reset --hard origin master  Then push again

User · Answer

I had this issue when I didn t have a gitignore file with my iOS project I think maybe it was trying to push a humungous file to github and github was probably rejecting that giant file or  files

User · Answer

Sometimes the file is kept in tracking history  try the following steps    git commit  If you are seeing create mode with the big file listed  then do  git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch filename  HEAD  You should see a bunch of Rewrites shown in your console which ends with   rm  filename  and   the last line Ref was rewritten    It s done

User · Answer

I have tried all above methods but none of them work for me   Then I came up with my own solution    First of all  you need a clean  up-to-date local repo  Delete all the fucking large files  Now create a new folder OUTSIDE of your repo folder and use  Git create repository here  to make it a new Git repository  let s call it new local repo  This is it  All above methods said you have to clean the history     well  I m sick of that  let s create a new repo which has no history at all  Copy the files from your old  fucked up local repo to the new  beautiful repo  Note that the green logo on the folder icon will disappear  this is promising because this is a new repo  Commit to the local branch and then push to remote new branch  Let s call it new remote branch  If you don t know how to push from a new local repo  Google it  Congrats  You have pushed your clean  up-to-date code to GitHub  If you don t need the remote master branch anymore  you can make your new remote branch as new master branch  If you don t know how to do it  Google it  Last step  it s time to delete the fucked up old local repo  In the future you only use the new local repo

User · Answer

I had a similar issue and used the step above to remove the file  It worked perfectly    I then got an error on a second file that I needed to remove  remote  error  File  lt path filename gt  is 109 99 MB  this exceeds GitHub s file size limit of 100 00 MB   I tried the same step  got an error   A previous backup already exists in  lt path filename gt     From research on this website I used the command  git filter-branch --force --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt path filename gt   --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all   Worked great  and the large files were removed   Unbelievably  the push still failed with another error  error  RPC failed  curl 56 OpenSSL SSL read  SSL ERROR SYSCALL  errno 104 fatal  The remote end hung up unexpectedly  This I fixed by directly modifying the  git config file - postBuffer   999999999  After that the push went through

User · Answer

The solution to keep the large files folders within the working folder  This is the line that worked to solve the problem asked here  from answer 1    git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file dir gt   HEAD  This command also delete the file dir if the file dir is within the working tree   If you want to keep the file folder within the working tree I propose taking the following steps    After that error run git reset HEAD  Add the file folder in question into    gitignore    file  Proceed as usual git add   which might capture other files folders but must capture  gitignore file  Next is git commit -m message  and finally git push origin  lt branch name gt

User · Answer

My unorthodox but simple solution from scratch   just forget about your recent problematic local git repository and git clone your repository into a fresh new directory  git remote add upstream  lt your github rep here gt  git pull upstream master at this point just copy your new files to commit  to your new local rep from the old one may be including your now reduced giant file s   git add   git commit -m  quot your commit text here quot  git push origin master  voila  worked like a charm in my case

User · Answer

Why is GitHub rejecting my repo  even after I deleted the big file   Git stores the full history of your project  so even if you  delete  a file from your project  the Git repo still has a copy of the file in it s history  and if you try to push to another repository  like one hosted at GitHub  then Git requires the remote repo has the same history that your local repo does  ie the same big files in it s history    How can I can I get GitHub to accept my repo   You need to clean the Git history of your project locally  removing the unwanted big files from all of history  and then use only the  cleaned  history going forward  The Git commit ids of the affected commits will change   How do I clean big files out of my Git repo   The best tool for cleaning unwanted big files out of Git history is the BFG Repo-Cleaner - it s a simpler  faster alternative to git-filter-branch specifically designed for removing unwanted files from Git history   Carefully follow the usage instructions  the core part is just this     java -jar bfg jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M my-repo git   Any files over 100MB in size  that aren t in your latest commit  will be removed from your Git repository s history  You can then use git gc to clean away the dead data     git gc --prune now --aggressive   The BFG is typically at least 10-50x faster than running git-filter-branch  and generally a lot easier to use   Full disclosure  I m the author of the BFG Repo-Cleaner

User · Answer

I am adding to the first answer      git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch   HEAD   There will be some merge conflict from origin master      Your branch and  origin master  have diverged    and have 114 and 109 different commits each  respectively       use  git pull  to merge the remote branch into yours    Please run this      git reset --hard origin master    It will throw away all my staged and unstaged changes  forget everything on my current local branch and make it exactly the same as origin master

User · Answer

If the file was added with your most recent commit  and you have not pushed to the remote repository  you can delete the file and amend the commit  Taken from here   git rm --cached giant file       Stage  giant file  for removal with  git rm        Leave it on disk with  --cached   if you want to remove it from disk       then ignore the  --cached  parameter git commit --amend -CHEAD       Commit the current tree without the giant file using  git commit        Amend the previous commit with your change  --amend          simply making a new commit won t work  as you need       to remove the file from the unpushed history as well        Use the log authorship timestamp of the last commit  the one we are       amending  with  -CHEAD   equivalent to --reuse-message HEAD git push       Push our rewritten  smaller commit with  git push

User · Answer

You can use   git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch  lt file dir gt   HEAD   This will delete everything in the history of that file  The problem is that the file is present in the history   This command changes the hashes of your commits which can be a real problem  especially on shared repositories  It should not be performed without understanding the consequences

User · Answer

So I encountered a particular situation  I cloned a repository from gitlab  which contained a file larger than 100 mb  but was removed at some point in the git history  Then later when I added a new github private repo and tried to push to the new repo  I got the infamous  file too large  error  By this point  I no longer had access to the original gitlab repo  However  I was still able to push to the new private github repo using bfg-repo-cleaner on a LOCAL repository on my machine     cd     curl https   repo1 maven org maven2 com madgag bfg 1 13 0 bfg-1 13 0 jar  gt  bfg jar   cd my-project   git gc   cd       java -jar bfg jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M my-project   cd my-project   git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --prune now --aggressive   git remote -v   confirm origin is the remote you want to push to   git push origin master

User · Answer

I found squashing more useful than filter-branch  I did the following    Locally delete large files  Commit the local deletes  Soft reset back X number of commits  for me it was 3   git reset --soft HEAD 3     Then recommit all the changes together  AKA squash  git commit -m  New message for the combined commit  Push squashed commit    Special case  from user  lituo   If above doesn t work  then you may have this case  Commit 1 included the large file and Commit 1 s push failed due to large file error  Commit 2 removed the large file by git rm --cached  file name  but Commit 2 s push still failed  You can follow the same steps above but instead of using HEAD 3  use HEAD 2

User · Answer

rather than doing complicated stuff  copy your repo  on your computer  to another place  delete the large file  do a couple of push and pull  Then some of your files will be messed up having things like  quot  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  lt  HEAD quot   Just copy your backup into the old folder on the disk  Do another add  commit  push

[git] Can't push to GitHub because of large file which I already deleted

1. Find which commit(s) contains the large file

2. Find the one just before the oldest.

3. Git rebase

Examples related to git

Examples related to github

Examples related to git-push