Git and nasty error cannot lock existing info refs fatal

Question

After cloning from remote git repository  at bettercodes  I made some changes  commited  and tried to push    git push origin master   Errors with      error  cannot lock existing info refs   fatal  git-http-push failed   This case regards already existing repository   What I did before  was    git config    global http sslVerify false git init git remote add  url   git clone change data  git commit   At  bettercodes  I have no access to git log   I m using Windows  The detailed error was   C  MyWorkStuff Projects Ruby MyProject  gt git push origin master Unable to create branch path https   user password git bettercodes org myproject info  error  cannot lock existing info refs fatal  git-http-push failed   I cloned before  then changed the code and committed

User · Answer

Check that you  git process actually  have access to file  git info refs and this file isn t locked by another process

User · Answer

This is how it works for me    look up the Apache DAV lock file on your server  e g   var lock apache2 DAVlock  delete it recreate it with write permissions for the webserver restart the webserver   Even faster alternative    look up the Apache DAV lock file on your server  e g   var lock apache2 DAVlock  Empty the file  cat  dev null  gt   var lock apache2 DAVlock restart the webserver

User · Answer

In my case  it was connected with the branch name that I had already created     To fix the issue I ve created a branch with the name that for certain shouldn t exist  like     git checkout -b some unknown branch   Then I ve cleared all my other branches not active  because they were just unnecessary garbage     git branch   grep -v      grep -v master   xargs git branch -D   and then renamed my current branch with the name that I ve intended  like   git checkout -m my desired branch name

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Aside from the many answers already supplied to this question  a simple check on the local repo branches that exist in your machine and those that don t in the remote  will help  In which case you don t use the  git prune  command as many have suggested  Simply delete the local branch git branch -d  lt branch name without a remote tracking branch by the same name gt   as shown in the attached screenshot using -D to force delete when you are sure that a local branch does not have a remote branch tracked

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Update   You might need to edit your    netrc file   https   bugs launchpad net ubuntu  source git-core  bug 293553  Original answer   Why did you disable ssl  I think this might have to do with you not being able to push via https  I d set it back and try to push again   git config    global http sslVerify true

User · Answer

Run git fetch --all before git pull  That should solve the problem

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For me this worked   git remote prune origin  Since this answer seems to help a lot of people  I dug a little bit into what actually happens here  What this will do is remove references to remote branches in the folder  git refs remotes origin  So this will not affect your local branches and it will not change anything remote  but it will update the local references you have to remote branches  It seems in some cases these references can contain data Git cannot handle correctly

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for me  removing  git info ref kick things going There shouldn t be a ref file when git is not running  But in my case there were one for whatever reason and caused the problem  Removing the file will not remove any of your local commits or branches

User · Answer

Before pull you need to clean your local changes  following command help me to solve  git remote prune origin  and then after git pull origin develop  Hopes this helps

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In case of bettercodes org  the solution is more poetic - the only problem may be in rights assigned to the project members  Simple members don t have write rights  Please make sure that you have the Moderator or Administrator rights  This needs to be set at bettercodes org at the project settings by an Administrator  of course

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In my case a branch was moved to a subdirectory and the directory was called as the branch  Git was confused by that  When I deleted the local branch  in SourceTree just with right click delete  everything worked as usual

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What worked for me was    Remove  git logs refs remotes origin branch  Remove  git refs remotes origin branch  Run git gc --prune now

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I had this problem  when I was trying to create a new feature branch that contained name of the old branch  e g  origin - branch1 and I wanted to create branch1-feature   It wasn t possibble  but branch1 feature was already

User · Answer

Running command git update-ref -d refs heads origin branch fixed it

User · Answer

This is what I did to get rid of all the lock ref issues   git gc --prune now git remote prune origin   This is probably what you only need to do too

User · Answer

I had this issue because I was on a branch that had a similar name to an upstream branch  i e  the upstream branch was called example-branch and my local branch was called example-branch backend  The solution was changing the name of my local branch like so   git branch -m  lt new name goes here gt

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You want to try doing   git gc --prune now   See https   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-gc html

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I fixed this by doing the following  git branch --unset-upstream rm  git refs remotes origin  branch  git gc --prune now git branch --set-upstream-to origin  branch   branch   or git push --set-upstream origin  branch  git pull   This assuming that your local and remote branches are aligned and you are just getting the refs error as non fatal

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I saw this error when trying to run git filter-branch to detach many subdirectories into a new  separate repository  as in this answer    I tried all of the above solutions and none of them worked  Eventually  I decided I didn t need to preserve my tags all that badly in the new branch and just ran   git remote remove origin git tag   xargs git tag -d git gc --prune now git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm --cached -qr --ignore-unmatch --    amp  amp  git reset -q  GIT COMMIT -- apps AAA  libs xxx  --prune-empty -- --all

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I had a typical Mac related issue that I could not resolve with the other suggested answers  Mac s default file system setting is that it is case insensitive  In my case  a colleague obviously forgot to create a uppercase letter for a branch i e  testBranch ID-1 vs  testbranch ID-2 for the Mac file system  yeah  it can be configured differently  these two branches are the same and in this case  you only get one of the two folders  And for the remaining folder you get an error  In my case  removing the sub-folder in question in  git logs ref remotes origin resolved the problem  as the branch in question has already been merged back

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This is probably resolved by now  But here is what worked for me    Location    If locked repository is on the server-side    ssh to your git repository on the server   Login as user which has permissions to modify the repository and navigate to the repository on your server   If locked repository is local only    Open the git console and navigate to the repository directory  Run this command   git update-server-info    Fix the permissions on your  remote or and local  repository if you have to  In my case I had to chmod to 777 and chown to apache apache Try to push again from the local repository   git push

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In my case after getting this message I did the checkout command and was given this message   Your branch is based on  origin myBranch   but the upstream is gone     use  git branch --unset-upstream  to fixup    After running this command I was back to normal

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In my case I had to manually delete old tags which had been removed on remote

User · Answer

This sounds like a permissions issue - is it possible you had two windows open  executing with separate rights  Perhaps check ownership of the  git folder   Perhaps check to see if there is an outstanding file lock open  maybe use lsof to check  or the equivalent for your OS

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This happened to me when my git remote  bitbucket org  changed their IP address  The quick fix was to remove and re-add the remote  then everything worked as expected  If you re not familiar with how to remove and re-add a remote in git  here are the steps    Copy the SSH git URL of your existing remote  You can print it to the terminal using this command   git remote -v   which will print out something like this    origin git server-address org account-name repo-name git  fetch   origin git server-address org account-name repo-name git  push     Remove the remote from your local git repo   git remote rm origin Add the remote back to your local repo   git remote add origin git server-address org account-name repo-name git

[git] Git and nasty "error: cannot lock existing info/refs fatal"

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