Summary
I recently lost the ability to make any changes using Git on my Windows system. After a few days of not using my PC I come back to a non functional git so I have no idea what caused this issue.
Examples:
git add or git checkout => fatal: Unable to create 'dummy-repo/.git/index.lock': No such file or directory
git clone => fatal: could not create work tree dir 'DummyRepo': No such file or directory
As a side note, this problem occured after trying to start my Flutter application, which could not retrieve the packages because of an OS error where access was denied. I'm thinking this is either because of some write permissions being messed up or a certain process locking a file.
What I've tried so far:
Closing all files and rebooting PC
Uninstalling and reinstalling Git
Run Git Bash as an administrator
Changed system write permission to my user account for all files
Any help is appreciated!
On Windows, this may happen if you enabled the "Ransomware protection" in Setting > Windows security > Virus & threat protection.
You need to add an exclusion for git.exe, or move the project outside a protected folder.
I've solved it myself by changing the location of my project to C:\ instead of a way longer path. This was never a problem before but it works so I'm happy.
I did 2 things:
I found that there was a file named 'index' in '.git/' directory. I made a copy of it, and renamed the copy as 'index.lock'.
Under 'Ransomware protection', I temporarily switched off 'Controlled folder access'.
Problem solved.
After I am done, I switched 'Controlled folder access' back on.
Try creating that file in your .git directory, you can use these commands in Git Bash or linux/mac
cd .git
touch index.lock
On Windows CMD
cd .git
type nul > index.lock
I'm new to Git and repeatedly getting the following error.
When I type the command git config --global color.ui auto I get the error:
error: could not lock config file C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_101/bin/.gitconfig: Permission denied
I have been getting the same permission denied error for other commands as well. I don't know if there is any problem with the path.
HOME should not be set to the JDK bin folder, but to your %USERPROFILE%.
Do check in a CMD session the value of your account:
set USER
You should see your username and USERPROFILE folder.
Then try the same git config command, in that CMD session, setting HOME first:
set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
I was facing permission denied for git config --global user.name command from Git bash in Windows.
I ran the Git bash with Administrator privileges and was able to resolve the error.
Note: I also got the same error from Intellij trying to commit changes; that too got resolved after running Intellij in Admin mode.
I had the same issue, trying to set the initial configuration for git - user.name and user.email and failing with a "Permission denied" error. It failed in Normal and Administrator mode and on all CLIs - PowerShell, CMD and GitBash.
The reason in my case was rather stupid. Somehow I had a ~/.gitconfig folder, rather than a file, so the CLIs were failing to create the file, due to filename conflict. Although the error message could have been more helpful.
The solution - just delete the folder and try again.
So, I have been working on a project and have been using git to push to github, and then suddenly today after I have been working for a little while I went to git add and got fatal: .git/index: index file open failed: Permission denied
I can't think of anything I have done recently on my computer that would cause this. Although I woke up today noticing my computer had rebooted overnight, and I noticed some different settings were not how I normally leave them. For instance quiet mode was turned off, and I always have that on. Thought it was kind of weird but ran a virus scan and didn't notice anything so I shrugged it off thinking it may be something on window's end.
Should I be nervous something is playing with my permissions? After a few minutes of googling I haven't found out too much on this error. Kinda baffled because I haven't personally changed any permissions and it everything seemed fine yesterday.
Looking for some help, if there is anything else I need to include to solve this error I'll gladly provide it if asked. Nobody else uses this computer. It is a Windows 10 build, git version 2.6.3.windows.1.
edit: Here's the output
11:21:34.673917 trace.c:319 setup: git_dir: .git
11:21:34.674417 trace.c:320 setup: git_common_dir: .git
11:21:34.674417 trace.c:321 setup: worktree: D:/Downloads/AnotherTabExample
11:21:34.674417 trace.c:322 setup: cwd: D:/Downloads/AnotherTabExample
11:21:34.674417 trace.c:323 setup: prefix: (null)
11:21:34.674417 git.c:348 trace: built-in: git 'add' '.'
fatal: .git/index: index file open failed: Permission denied
Mark: If you have this error in Android studio, just restart your android studio and this error will be solved. I guess that This is because of some 'cache' or 'bug' of intellij idea.
From the verbose output, it appears that the permissions of the .git/index while might have gotten corrupted.
Confirm that this is the case by doing a ls -al .git/index followed by a chmod 644 .git/index to fix it. Then try running the git add command again.
Update
It turned out to be a (Windows) permissions issue. What worked was simply creating a copy from within msysgit of the original folder and using that (i.e. cp -rvf original original-bkup).
A reset of the permissions on the original folder should have worked, but didn't.
Using Windows 7, we have a bare GIT repository set up on a network drive so that multiple users can pull/push from it. I am able to create a new working repo on my local and multiple other networked drives. However, when I try to clone a new working repository on the same network drive (different folder) , it fails.
Using TortoiseGIT, after I right-click and choose "GIT Clone", put in all of the necessary paths to my bare repo (the new working repo is already filled in) and hit ok, I get the following error:
Cloning into 'R:\path\to\new\repo'... done.
error: refs/remotes/origin/master does not point to a valid object!
error: Trying to write ref refs/heads/master with nonexistent object 5d2164db2c61efc7a5598f6ff75ed3fbbb12456e
fatal: Cannot update the ref 'HEAD'.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly git did not exit cleanly (exit code 128)
and it fails to create the repo. It does however build the new folder & ".git" subfolder structure.
It's not a r/w permissions issue because I can r/w any other files, but just cannot seem to create this newly cloned repo. My co-worker cannot either. Even if I got to another folder on the network drive, I still cannot clone the repo successfully. Surprisingly, if I just copy/paste a repo I created in another location, then manually do a "pull", it works and updates successfully.
Any ideas on what to try next? Obviously I've Googled "exit code 128" and "cannot update the ref 'HEAD'" but cannot find a solution to my issue. It's probably something really simple that we are overlooking, but we're just getting started with GIT and this is really causing us headaches...
UPDATE: I just noticed that when I do a manual pull from GIT to my "copy", it is doing a Fast-Forward. Maybe this provides some additional clues?
From R:/path/to/repo
* branch master -> FETCH_HEAD
Updating 5d2164d..d75bdb7
Fast-forward
Files.py | 3 +++
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
Success
Git might be trying to do some smart stuff with hardlinks that fails on the network drive. Try using git clone --no-hardlinks /r/path/to/my/repo or git clone file:///r/path/to/my/repo
Please do this via command line in msysgit
git clone /r/path/to/my/repo /r/some/other/path
Further, I would recommend using git from the command line as it is a tool that was designed to be used from the command line. You will be able to find more help, faster, with any issues that come up for you.
Using the GitHub Windows client I did a sync to pull remote changes to my local machine, but before finishing the sync, I ran out of disk space and the sync failed. Now I seem to have a bunch of local changes that are actually changes that were being pulled from origin. I tried to run git pull but got:
C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~26 -0 !]> git pull
Updating b3a86e1..5afd74f
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
SourceLog.Interface/IChangedFile.cs
SourceLog.Interface/ILogEntry.cs
...
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
Lib/MSBuildExtensionPack/4.0.6.0/Ionic.Zip.dll
Lib/MSBuildExtensionPack/4.0.6.0/MSBuild.ExtensionPack.dll
...
Aborting
So now I'm trying to discard the local changes but I'm getting:
C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~26 -0 !]> git checkout -- .
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) y
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) n
fatal: unable to write new index file
How can I clean this up? (I didn't have any local changes before starting the sync.)
Update
Can't seem to reset head..
C:\Users\Tom\SourceLog [master +4 ~0 -0 !]> git reset head
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) y
Rename from '.git/index.lock' to '.git/index' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) n
error: Could not write new index file.
fatal: Could not reset index file to revision 'head'.
Looks like the following process had a lock on the .git\index file:
ssh-agent.exe
C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\GitHub\PortableGit_8810fd5c2c79c73adcc73fd0825f3b32fdb816e7\bin\ssh-agent.exe
I killed the process and ran git reset HEAD and looks like I'm back to normal now.
In my case, this was caused by using the same Git repo from both admin and non-admin command prompts. When last git pull was from admin cmd, the index was created by it, and then non-admin cmd had insufficient permissions to modify it.
My solution was re-creating the index (while keeping the worktree intact):
del .git\index
del .git\index.lock
git reset --mixed head
In my case I had to close the VS code which I opened with code . from a WSL Ubuntu terminal.
It can be a real issue, try to run your Terminal as Administrator instead of user. Worked for me
I was seeing this Rename from '.git/index.lock'... message when attempting to execute
git checkout -b my-branch
The fix for me was to run the command line as admin.
Specifically I was using the excellent cmder application as a non-admin, which resulted in the rename message appearing. By running cmder as an admin, then performing the checkout again, it worked fine.
Git 2.10 (Q3 2016, 4 years later) should improve the situation on Windows
See commit 05d1ed6 (23 Aug 2016) by Ben Wijen (Ben).
mingw: ensure temporary file handles are not inherited by child processes
When the index is locked and child processes inherit the handle to
said lock and the parent process wants to remove the lock before the
child process exits, on Windows there is a problem: it won't work
because files cannot be deleted if a process holds a handle on them.
The symptom:
Rename from 'xxx/.git/index.lock' to 'xxx/.git/index' failed.
Should I try again? (y/n)
Spawning child processes with bInheritHandles==FALSE would not work
because no file handles would be inherited, not even the hStdXxx handles in STARTUPINFO (stdin/stdout/stderr).
Opening every file with O_NOINHERIT does not work, either, as e.g. git-upload-pack expects inherited file handles.
This leaves us with the only way out: creating temp files with the O_NOINHERIT flag. This flag is Windows-specific, however.
For our purposes, it is equivalent to O_CLOEXEC (which does not exist on
Windows), so let's just open temporary files with the O_CLOEXEC flag and
map that flag to O_NOINHERIT on Windows.
To discard local changes, go
git reset HEAD
Then checkout your old commit, delete the new one, and pull again.
git checkout "hashOld"
git branch -d "hashNew"
git pull
For me it was this error:
Rename from 'D:/dev/repo/.git/refs/remotes/origin/my-branch.lock' to 'D:/dev/repo/.git/refs/remotes/origin/my-branch' failed. Should I try again? (y/n)
Renamed "my-branch" file, retried, and "my-branch.lock" succeed in renaming, not sure if this is correct, but worked. Local changes in both master and my-branch were preserved.
I got this error several times in a row when running git reset HEAD in a project stored in a Google Drive folder, but after a few minutes the problem went away.
I removed index and index.lock (in the .git folder) and ran git checkout . to undo the changes and resolved, but if I wanted to commit the changes I would have run git add -A after git commit -m "description"
I ran into this issue and wanted to post the answer for future searchers. Windows confirmed only. I got this when my git repository was under a directory that requires elevated permissions, AND I was running git from a process(cmd.exe) that did NOT have permissions to write to that folder, thus it could not clear the lock.
The answer is simple, run as admin.
I've answered this on a similar question. Might help others too, quoting the same here:
"For if any windows user stumbles on this:
I faced same issue and it wasn't solved by permissions since I had all the permissions assigned. Removing index.lock didn't help either.
I tried with WSL and it showed this error:
Another git process seems to be running in this repository.
Based on this I quit every process run by VS Code (that is the IDE I am using) and voila everything back to normal.
Note: Merely closing VS Code didn't help, had to end all processes from task explorer.
On a larger point, try ending all the processes via which you were using git. For me it was just VS Code."
Original answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67615831/13404308
I had a similar issue with Git. The solution for me was to delete the solution locally through windows explorer, and then re-clone the repository. This removed all the files that were stored locally on my machine, and resulted in the
Rename from '.git/..' to '.git/..' failed. Should I try again? (y/n) y
going away. After I cloned the respository, I tried my command again(which in my case was GIT COMMIT) and the failure did not reoccur.
The issue came about when I was trying to resolve a merge conflict that was happening after merging a feature branch into the develop branch.
Either kill the process that is locking the file or if it is a new repo, del the .git folder rm -rf .git and start again with git init
I'm using Tortoise Git. I just opened a new Windows Explorer and it fixed this. (For command line Git maybe just open a new shell).
I had seem issue when I was rebase my branch with master. My solution is turn off all solution which are opening and reset hard my branch to origin and rebase again.
git init resolved my problem. I was getting below issue.
Rename from '.git/objects/pack/pack-XXXXX.pack' to '.git/objects/pack/old-XXXXX.pack' failed. Should I try again? (y/n)
This is caused when antivirus or OS defender (for example Windows Defender) is running.
The solution: turn off antivirus for several minutes make your add, commit and push.
Turn on antivirus.
It will work.
In my case, I had done a git pull as Admin, and my regular user no longer had sufficient permissions.
My solution was to reset ownership to my regular user.
Right-click on .git, and open Properties.
On the Security tab, click Advanced.
In Advanced Security Settings, next to Owner, click Change (even if it's already correct).
In Select User, select the regular user, and click Okay.
On the Security tab, under Owner, you now have a Replace owner of subcontainers and objects checkbox - Check this and click Okay.
I tried a lot of suggestions. At times, a commit would succeed, but then the error returned. At last, pausing Dropbox sync seems to have done the trick! I have no clue how Dropbox sync could cause this error for longer than a few moments (the time required to sync my 24K .git/index).
For my case, it was just Windows Explorer being open and it was opening the directory above the directory that I wanted to rename. After closing Windows Explorer, issue went away immediately.
I was using Bash Git as Administrator.
in my case, I was using vim on WSL and writing git command on Powershell so I quit vim and then I was able to switch branches
Restart your Source Code editor; killing a Process may work but is not polite_
I copied (in Windows 10) the whole project to a new folder. Pushed from there to the origin (at that no index problem issued). Then I returned back to the project directory, where the problem occured. Deleted .git directory. Initialized anew (git init). Added to the index (git add . ). Fetched from the remote origin and merged. That's all there is to it.
I change project permission
Then, I exit Code Editor