How to resolve Error bad index Fatal index file corrupt when using Git

Question

After git init  I added and committed a few files  made some changes  added and committed   Set up the git daemon  running under Cygwin on WinXP  and cloned the repository once  Now  I get this error with the cloned repository     git status error  bad index file sha1 signature fatal  index file corrupt   Is there any way to fix this  other than getting a new copy of the repository

User · Answer

This is ridiculous but I just have rebooted my machine  mac  and the problem was gone like it has never happened  I hate to sound like a support guy

User · Answer

You may have accidentally corrupted the  git index file with a sed on your project root  refactoring perhaps   with something like   sed -ri -e  s  SEACHPATTERN  REPLACEMENTTEXT g    grep -Elr   SEARCHPATERN    PROJECTROOT     to avoid this in the future  just ignore binary files with your grep sed   sed -ri -e  s  SEACHPATTERN  REPLACEMENTTEXT g    grep -Elr --binary-files without-match   SEARCHPATERN    PROJECTROOT

User · Answer

This worked for me   Although i m curious of the reason I started getting the errors in the first place   When I logged out yesterday  it was fine   Log in this morning  it wasn t     rm  git index  git reset

User · Answer

Since the above solutions left me with continued problems  I used this dull solution    clone a new copy of the repo elsewhere copy the fresh  git directory into the  broken  repo that contained the changes I wanted to commit   Did the trick  Btw  I did a sed on the project root as  hobs guessed  Learned my lesson

User · Answer

Note for git submodule users - the solutions here will not work for you as-is   Let s say you have a parent repository called dev  for example  and your submodule repository is called api   if you are inside of api and you get the error mentioned in this question   error  bad index file sha1 signature fatal  index file corrupt  The index file will NOT be inside of a  git folder   In fact  the  git won t even be a folder - it will will be a text document with the location of the real  git data for this repository  Likely something like this     dev api   cat  git gitdir      git modules api  So  instead of rm -f  git index  you will need to do this   rm -f     git modules api index git reset  or  more generally   rm -f     git modules INSERT YOUR REPO NAME HERE index git reset

User · Answer

This issue can occur when there is a  git directory underneath one of the subdirectories   To fix it  check if there are other  git directories there  and remove them and try again

User · Answer

This sounds like a bad clone  You could try the following to get  possibly   more information   git fsck --full

User · Answer

If the problem is with the index as the staging area for commits  i e   git index   you can simply remove the index  make a backup copy if you want   and then restore index to version in the last commit   On OSX Linux   rm -f  git index git reset   On Windows   del  git index git reset    The reset command above is the same as  git reset --mixed HEAD   You can alternatively use lower level plumbing git read-tree instead of git reset     If the problem is with index for packfile  you can recover it using git index-pack

User · Answer

I had that problem  and I try ti fix with this   rm -f  git index git reset   BUT it did not work  The solution  For some reason I had others  git folders in sub directories  I delete those  git folders  not the principal  and git reset again  Once they were deleted  everything worked again

User · Answer

You can also try for restore to previous version of the file  if you are using windows os

User · Answer

I did a simple trick  I clone the repo to a new folder  Copied the  git folder from the new folder to repo s old folder  replacing  git there

User · Answer

A repo may seem corrupted if you mix different git versions  Local repositories touched by new git versions aren t backwards-compatible with old git versions  New git repos look corrupted to old git versions  in my case git 2 28 broke repo for git 2 11   Updating old git version may solve the problem

User · Answer

None of the existing answers worked for me  I was using worktrees  so there is no  git folder  You ll need to go back to your main repo  Inside that  delete  git worktrees  lt name of tree gt  index Then run git reset as per other answers

User · Answer

rm -f  git index git reset   More info at https   www chris-shaw com blog quick-fix-for-git-corrupt-index

[git] How to resolve "Error: bad index – Fatal: index file corrupt" when using Git

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