git pull fails unable to resolve reference unable to update local ref

Question

Using git 1 6 4 2  when I tried a git pull I get this error    error  unable to resolve reference refs remotes origin LT558-optimize-sql  No such file or directory From git ssh   remoteserver   misk5     new branch       LT558-optimize-sql - gt  origin LT558-optimize-sql   unable to update local ref  error  unable to resolve reference refs remotes origin split-css  No such file or directory     new branch       split-css  - gt  origin split-css   unable to update local ref    I ve tried git remote prune origin  but it didn t help

User · Answer

I was able to work with   git remote update --prune

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In case anyone finds this useful  I was getting this issue chronically  although not constantly  and it was because I had git directory within Dropbox  removed it from Dropbox and all was fine

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For me  I had a local branch named feature phase2 and the remote branch was named feature phase2 data-model  The naming conflict was the cause of the problem  so I deleted my local branch  you could rename it if it had anything you needed to keep

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Happened to me as well  In my case  the bad ref was master  and I did the following   rm  git refs remotes origin master git fetch   This made git restore the ref file  After that everything worked as expected again

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Got this issue when trying to clone from a git bundle created file  none of the other answers worked because I couldn t clone the repo  so git gc and removing editing files was out of the question    There was however another way to fix this - the source file of a  bundle file was begining with     v2 git bundle 9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d HEAD 9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d refs heads master 9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d refs heads master  PACK       p  x   Kj 0      and so on       Simply removing the fourth line with vim fixed the issue

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I m using Tower and for some reason my folder name was  git refs remotes origin Github  Changing it to lowercase  git refs remotes origin github solved the issue

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If git gc --prune now dosen t help you   bad luck like me   What I did is remove the project in local  and re clone the whole project again

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I had the same problem with composer update  But for me it only worked after I cleared the composer cache and after deleting the content of the vendor folder   rm -rf vendor   git gc --prune now git pull composer clear-cache composer update my package

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I had this issue while using SourceTree   I tried to pull again and it worked   I think I Was witching branches  checkout  too fast      My situation is a bit different from the poster s because my repository has been relatively cooperative  without any apparent corruption

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For me  I solved it this way  rm  git refs remotes origin master git fetch  After that I get this message from github  There is no tracking information for the current branch So next I did to fix this was  git branch --set-upstream-to origin master master git pull

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If this error    unable to update local ref    is reoccurring  even after applying either the answer by Vojtech Vitek or Michel Kr  mer you may you may have a bad ref on your local AND master repository   In this case you should apply both fix s without pulling or pushing in between      rm  git refs remotes origin master git fetch git gc --prune now git remote prune origin   A permanent resolution for me was only achieved after applying both fix s before push pull

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Try this   git pull origin Branch Name   Branch Name  the branch which you are currently on   If you do only a git pull  it pulls all other created branch name as well   So is the reason you are getting this      new branch       split-css  - gt  origin split-css   unable to update local ref

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Try cleaning-up your local repository with     git gc --prune now   git remote prune origin     man git-gc 1    git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository  git gc  --aggressive   --auto   --quiet   --prune  lt date gt    --no-prune          Runs a number of housekeeping tasks within the current repository  such as compressing file revisions         to reduce disk space and increase performance  and removing unreachable objects which may have been        created from prior invocations of git add          Users are encouraged to run this task on a regular basis within each repository to maintain good disk        space utilization and good operating performance    man git-remote 1    git-remote - manage set of tracked repositories  git remote prune  -n   --dry-run   lt name gt              Deletes all stale remote-tracking branches under  lt name gt   These stale branches have already been            removed from the remote repository referenced by  lt name gt   but are still locally available in             remotes  lt name gt

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We got this issue when a developer on Mac created a branch with a greater than     symbol in the branch name   That caused problems in TeamCity  and on local Windows based computers running SourceTree  BitBucket let it through without any problems   To resolve the user removed the branch and recreated it  Which was nice and easy

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I used git prune origin and that did the work

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Just ran into the problem today   Troubleshooting method  With SourceTree on Windows Servers  you may try to run it as an Administrator  That fixes my problem of  unable to update local ref  on Atlassian Source Tree 2 1 2 5 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 in domain   If you can too replicate this situation  it proves that the problem is caused by permission issue  It s better to drill down and find the root cause - probably some particular files are owned by other users and such - otherwise there s an unwelcome side-effect  you ll have to run SourceTree as Administrator for the rest of eternity

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Execute the following commands   rm  git refs remotes origin master  git fetch  git branch --set-upstream-to origin master      Just in case  if you need to know what is    git refs remotes origin master  you would read the Remotes section   in Git References

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Writing down a specific case that might cause this problem   One day I pushed a branch named  feature subfeature   while having  feature  branch on remote   That operation worked fine without any error on my side  but when my co-workers fetched and or pulled any branch  they all had the exact same error message unable to update local ref  cannot lock ref  refs remotes origin feature subfeature   This was solved by deleting feature branch on remote git push --delete origin feature  and then running git remote prune origin on my co-workers  repo  which generated messages including    pruned  origin feature   So  my guess is git fetch was trying to create subfeature ref in feature folder on git internally  git       but creating folder failed because there was feature ref already

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Had the same msg but with a directory  got a failed msg on pull   git --prone did not help me either  Turns out there was a file with the same name as a directory created remotely   Had to go to  git logs refs remotes origin and erase the locale file - then pull again  all good

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I just would like to add how it may happen that a reference breaks   Possible root cause  On my system  Windows 7 64-bit   when a BSOD happens  some of the stored reference files  most likely currently opened being written into when BSOD happened  are overwritten with NULL characters  ASCII 0    As others mentioned  to fix it  it s enough to just delete those invalid reference files and re-fetch or re-pull the repository   Example  Error  cannot lock ref  refs remotes origin some branch   unable to resolve reference  refs remotes origin some branch   reference broken  Solution  delete the file  repo root   git refs remotes origin some branch

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I had same issue  i follow following steps   1 switch your branch which having issue  to other branch   2  delete that branch   3  checkout again   Note - You can stash you uncommitted changes and put it back again

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In my case  the problem was solved after I ve deleted all the remove reference files under the directory  git   If you look at the message  it would tell you which files you need to delete  specifically    The files to delete sit under  git refs remotes   I ve just deleted all the files there  and ran gc prune  git gc --prune now   After that  everything works just fine

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remove the reference file of the branch  lost   rm -fv    git refs remotes origin feature v1 6 9-api-token-bot-reader     get all the branches from the master  git fetch --all     git will  know  how-to handle the issue from now on        From github com futurice senzoit-www-server       new branch       feature v1 6 9-api-token-bot-reader - gt     origin feature v1 6 9-api-token-bot-reader     and push your local changes  git push

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Explanation  It appears your remote repo  in Github   bitbucket  branches were removed  though your local references were not updated and pointing to non existent references   In order to solve this issue   git fetch --prune git fetch --all git pull   For extra reading - Reference from Github documentation        git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository      --all   Fetch all remotes       --prune   After fetching  remove any remote tracking branches which no longer exist on the remote

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I had this same issue and solved it by going to the file it was erroring on    repo  git refs remotes origin master   This file was full of nulls  I replaced it with the latest ref from github

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This did the job for me   git gc --prune now

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Faced the same issue when repository was deleted and created with the same name  It worked only when I re-set the remote url like below      git remote set-url origin  GIT REPO URL    Verify the remote url   git remote -v   Now  all commands should work as usual

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To Answer this in very short  this issue comes when your local has some information about the remote and someone changes something which makes remote and your changes unsync    I was getting this issue because someone has deleted remote branch and again created with the same name   For dealing with such issues  do a pull or fetch from remote   git remote prune origin   or if you are using any GUI  do a fetch from remote

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For me  it worked to remove the files that are throwing errors from the folder  git refs remotes origin

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git fetch --prune fixed this error for me    marc zych marc-desktop  -    code driving  -  Wed May 10  02 58 25   I  gt  git fetch error  cannot lock ref  refs remotes origin user janek integration 20170505    refs remotes origin user janek integration  exists  cannot create  refs remotes origin user janek integration 20170505  From github com zooxco driving     new branch             user janek integration 20170505 - gt  origin user janek integration 20170505   unable to update local ref  From github com zooxco driving  marc zych marc-desktop  -    code driving  -  Wed May 10  02 58 30   I  gt  git fetch --prune  -  deleted                 none      - gt  origin user janek integration   This assumes that the offending branch was deleted on the remote  though

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Try it   git gc --prune now  git remote prune origin  git pull

[git] git pull fails "unable to resolve reference" "unable to update local ref"

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