Git error cannot lock ref unable to update local ref

Problem

Windows users can often have this problem

git pull 

gives the error: error: cannot lock ref unable to update local ref

Cause

Cause a) There are multiple branches, whose
names from the beginning up to any slash (or to the end), differ only in upper and lower case.

Branch name clashing (upper/lower case)
#######################################

# Example 1)
#############################
feature/releasecandidate/fix123
feature/releaseCandidate/improveFeature789
------------------------
               ^
  Identical from beginning up to a slash (here the 2nd one)
  except for the marked letter, where the upper/lower case differs




# Example 2)
#############################
releaseBranch
releasebranch
-------------
       ^
  Identical from beginning to the end
  except for the marked letter

Cause b) Also a problem on linux: One branch is a prefix of another, with a slash boundary:

Prefix with slash-boundary
#######################################

# Example 1) - also a problem on linux
#############################
feature/release2021
feature/release2021/fixIssue07
                   ^
              slash boundary

# Example 2)
#############################
feature/release2022
feature/Release2022/fixIssue99
        ^          ^
  differing case   slash boundary
 (problem on 
   windows)

Solution

Remove the cause (see exact Cause above).

# inspect your branches, to see if you have the upper/lower case problem
git ls-remote --heads YOUR-GIT-URL

For example: create a branch-naming policy, e.g. all in lower-case letters; or letters before the last slash in lower-case. Or some smart hook, that detect a violation. (but note: In cause a) the problem is only on windows, not on linux).

Background

The problem is that windows stores these branches (from example 1 and 2) in the .git folder

# inspect the files/folders under
.git/refs/remotes/origin/

and in Cause a) windows cannot distinguish
the differences in upper/lower case, so git on window goes crazy.

In Cause b) you cannot have a folder (e.g. feature/release2021/) with the same name as a file (feature/release2021).

Workaround

A short-term workaround that often works (until you’ve removed the cause) is:

git pack-refs --all

# delete the contents of .git/refs/remotes/origin/*  
rm -rf .git/refs/remotes/origin/*

git pull; git pull; git pull   # all good? yes!

Do you want to understand what «error: cannot lock ref» in Git actually means and how to fix it?

Version control (VCS) has become a vital part of modern software development workflow. Many VCS system exists, but market research shows that Git is the most popular of all.

Before Git you would copy the entire repository to another directory and then by hand copy your changes to the correct repository. Now creating a branch takes about as long as it takes to type the command. Git scratched many itches, some of which we didn’t even realize until we know it.

Most of the time, Git handles most changes automatically and encourages users to integrate the changes every day or even more often. But sometimes, Git can pops out strange error which is pretty vague and hard to debug if you’re a beginner.

This article is going to show you the reason behind «error: cannot lock ref» in Git and how to fix the error quickly.

Understanding Git locking mechanism

In order to understand why the reason behind «error: cannot lock ref», first, you need to know how Git uses a locking mechanism internally.

Everything related to your working directory is placed in a single, hidden directory named .git. Inside .git is all kinds of information about branch, commit, submodule, etc.

A typical .git directory looks like this

.git/
    hooks/
    info/
    logs/
    objects/
    refs/
    HEAD
    config
    description
    index
    packed-refs

Look closer into /refs and you will see /heads and /tags inside. They are the directories that contains information about each of your file in branches and tags.

Whenever you run an operation in Git, it creates index.lock file inside .git directory to ensure that no other Git process takes place during the operation.

«error: cannot lock ref» simply means information in /refs are corrupted and Git cannot continue to create index.lock file.

What the error looks like

«error: cannot lock ref» comes in many forms, often followed by addition information about what gone wrong. Below is a few of the outputs we’ve seen :

C:MyWorkStuffProjectsRubyMyProject>git push origin master
Unable to create branch path https://user:[email protected]/myproject/info/
error: cannot lock existing info/refs
fatal: git-http-push failed

> git pull
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/tags/v2.8': 'refs/tags' exists; cannot create 'refs/tags/v2.8'
From github.com:k3it/qsorder
 ! [new tag]         v2.8       -> v2.8  (unable to update local ref)
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/tags/v2.9': 'refs/tags' exists; cannot create 'refs/tags/v2.9'
 ! [new tag]         v2.9       -> v2.9  (unable to update local ref)

error: cannot lock ref 'refs/remotes/origin/test': is at c21593dc62042d39efc044f366579667e but expected 3d0e5b15fc558cd447fb475a8ecd999

> git pull origin master
From github.com:Microsoft/vscode
 * branch                  master     -> FETCH_HEAD
error: cannot lock ref 'refs/remotes/origin/master': is at 2e4bfdb24fd137a1d2e87bd480f283cf7001f19a but expected 70ea06a46fd4b38bdba9ab1d64f3fee0f63806a5
 ! 70ea06a46f..2e4bfdb24f  master     -> origin/master  (unable to update local ref)

Now let’s go through possible solutions to make the «error: cannot lock ref» goes away.

Quick fix : Remove and re-add remote

As all general computer-related advice said : When in doubt, restart! The quickest way you can get rid of «error: cannot lock ref» is to remove the remote so that you can add it again later.

If you don’t know how to do that, follow step-by-step instructions below.

1. 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 [email protected]:your-username/repo-name.git (fetch)
 origin [email protected]:your-username/repo-name.git (push)

1. Remove the remote from your local git repo:

   git remote rm origin

2. Add the remote back to your local repo:

   git remote add origin [email protected]:your-username/repo-name.git

Prune remote origin

Users across online forums have reported that the command below worked for them:

git remote prune origin

The command will 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.

If you’re reluctant to try the command above, which I didn’t at first, you can run git remote prune origin --dry-run to see what happens before proceeding with the actual command.

Clean up and optimize local repository

Git has a built-in gc command to cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository. The command do housekeeping tasks such as compressing file revisions to improve performance, removing unreachable objects which may have been created from prior invocations of git add, packing refs, pruning reflog, rerere metadata or stale working trees.

Run the following command to optimize your current repository.

git gc --prune=now

If it didn’t work, you can remove .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/branch and .git/refs/remotes/origin/branch then try again, as a few users reported that it works for them.

Double check for confusing branch names

If you’re creating a new branch and none of the above solutions works for you, the next thing you can do is to verify that your existing branch names don’t conflict with the new one. In Git, once a branch named a already exists, you cannot create a/b. Likewise, if a/b exists, creating a/b/c branch is not possible.

“error: cannot lock ref” – what to do?

Do you want to understand what «error: cannot lock ref» in Git actually means and how to fix it?

Version control (VCS) has become a vital part of modern software development workflow. Many VCS system exists, but market research shows that Git is the most popular of all.

Before Git you would copy the entire repository to another directory and then by hand copy your changes to the correct repository. Now creating a branch takes about as long as it takes to type the command. Git scratched many itches, some of which we didn’t even realize until we know it.

Most of the time, Git handles most changes automatically and encourages users to integrate the changes every day or even more often. But sometimes, Git can pops out strange error which is pretty vague and hard to debug if you’re a beginner.

This article is going to show you the reason behind «error: cannot lock ref» in Git and how to fix the error quickly.

Understanding Git locking mechanism

In order to understand why the reason behind «error: cannot lock ref», first, you need to know how Git uses a locking mechanism internally.

Everything related to your working directory is placed in a single, hidden directory named .git . Inside .git is all kinds of information about branch, commit, submodule, etc.

A typical .git directory looks like this

Look closer into /refs and you will see /heads and /tags inside. They are the directories that contains information about each of your file in branches and tags.

Whenever you run an operation in Git, it creates index.lock file inside .git directory to ensure that no other Git process takes place during the operation.

«error: cannot lock ref» simply means information in /refs are corrupted and Git cannot continue to create index.lock file.

What the error looks like

«error: cannot lock ref» comes in many forms, often followed by addition information about what gone wrong. Below is a few of the outputs we’ve seen :

Now let’s go through possible solutions to make the «error: cannot lock ref» goes away.

Quick fix : Remove and re-add remote

As all general computer-related advice said : When in doubt, restart! The quickest way you can get rid of «error: cannot lock ref» is to remove the remote so that you can add it again later.

If you don’t know how to do that, follow step-by-step instructions below.

Copy the SSH git URL of your existing remote. You can print it to the terminal using this command:

which will print out something like this:

Remove the remote from your local git repo:

git remote rm origin

Add the remote back to your local repo:

git remote add origin [email protected]:your-username/repo-name.git

Prune remote origin

Users across online forums have reported that the command below worked for them:

The command will 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.

If you’re reluctant to try the command above, which I didn’t at first, you can run git remote prune origin —dry-run to see what happens before proceeding with the actual command.

Clean up and optimize local repository

Git has a built-in gc command to cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository. The command do housekeeping tasks such as compressing file revisions to improve performance, removing unreachable objects which may have been created from prior invocations of git add, packing refs, pruning reflog, rerere metadata or stale working trees.

Run the following command to optimize your current repository.

If it didn’t work, you can remove .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/branch and .git/refs/remotes/origin/branch then try again, as a few users reported that it works for them.

Double check for confusing branch names

If you’re creating a new branch and none of the above solutions works for you, the next thing you can do is to verify that your existing branch names don’t conflict with the new one. In Git, once a branch named a already exists, you cannot create a/b . Likewise, if a/b exists, creating a/b/c branch is not possible.

Источник

Git “error: cannot lock ref” error

The following error occurred in my environment when I executed git pull .

What causes this error

If a branch name includes a slash, Git tries to create a folder. For example, if the branch name is bugfix/branch-name1, we can find the file your-directory/.git/refs/remotes/origin/bugfix/branch-name1.
I’ve not tested it but I guess if we create another branch Bugfix/branch-name2, we can find the file your-directory/.git/refs/remotes/origin/bugfix/branch-name2. The second branch name starts with an upper case while the first one is the lower case but Git can create the file because the file name is different.

However, if there are bugfix/branch-name1 and Bugfix/branch-name1 in the repository, Git throws this error . It seems that Git is case-sensitive but Windows is not. It’s impossible to create two folders that have the same name but different cases like bugfix and BUGFIX .

bugfix/branch-name1/branch1 causes this error if bugfix/branch-name1 has already existed.

Check if there are two branches that have the same name

Check if there are two branches that have the same name with this command.

If the branch is found, remove one of them or rename them.

Update local repository

Once the branch is removed, we need to update the local repository. Otherwise, the branch still remains in our repository. We need to remove branches that are no longer in the remote repository. Execute the following command. It removes all branches from the local repository that have gone from the remote repository.

Try to execute git pull or git fetch . It should work now.

If you want to learn the most used Git commands, check this post.

Источник

Error: Cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’ #6121

I have some problem with my GitHub. I read similar questions and answers to them in many forums, but unfortunately nothing helped.

error: cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: unable to resolve reference
‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: reference broken
From https://github.com/arbuzzer/arbuzzer.github.io
! [new branch] master -> origin/master (unable to update local ref)

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

Hi @arbuzzer, thanks for the report and sorry you’re having issues.

We ask that folks fill out the template so we can better understand your setup and what’s going on so we make the best use of the maintainers’ time. Here’s the template you need: https://github.com/desktop/desktop/issues/new?template=bug_report.md

Thanks for understanding and meeting us halfway! 😄

@arbuzzer It looks like there may be some underlying repository corruption that is causing this issue. Could you go to the file menu in GitHub Desktop and select Repository > Open in and run the command git fsck ? That should give some some more information about this error. Please share the full output of that command.

@arbuzzer It looks like there may be some underlying repository corruption that is causing this issue. Could you go to the file menu in GitHub Desktop and select Repository > Open in and run the command git fsck ? That should give some some more information about this error. Please share the full output of that command.

Hi @arbuzzer, thanks for the report and sorry you’re having issues.

We ask that folks fill out the template so we can better understand your setup and what’s going on so we make the best use of the maintainers’ time. Here’s the template you need: https://github.com/desktop/desktop/issues/new?template=bug_report.md

Thanks for understanding and meeting us halfway! 😄

Description

error: cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: unable to resolve reference
‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: reference broken
From https://github.com/arbuzzer/arbuzzer.github.io
! [new branch] master -> origin/master (unable to update local ref)

Version

*GitHub Desktop:

*Operating system:

Steps to Reproduce

1. I read the whole topic on this site and none of the proposed solutions helped me. (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2998832/git-pull-fails-unable-to-resolve-reference-unable-to-update-local-ref)

Expected(Blue Box) and Actual(Red Box) Behavior

1. 
2. 
   3.
   And so with every command that people offer.

Additional Information

Thanks for sharing that information @arbuzzer. A few other questions:

• Based on the screenshot it looks like you are were running those commands in your root directory (i.e. C:UsersYour_User) — is that the correct location of this repository, or is it possibly in a different directory? If you are storing this repository in a different location you will need to run Git commands from within that directory that contains your repository.
• Is this a repository that you just freshly cloned to your local machine using GitHub Desktop?

It would also be helpful if you could run the following two commands within the repository directory to provide more configuration information about your local repository:

git branch -a
git config -l —list

Please let me know the output of both of those commands

Thanks for sharing that information @arbuzzer. A few other questions:

• Based on the screenshot it looks like you are were running those commands in your root directory (i.e. C:UsersYour_User) — is that the correct location of this repository, or is it possibly in a different directory? If you are storing this repository in a different location you will need to run Git commands from within that directory that contains your repository.
• Is this a repository that you just freshly cloned to your local machine using GitHub Desktop?

It would also be helpful if you could run the following two commands within the repository directory to provide more configuration information about your local repository:

git branch -a
git config -l —list

Please let me know the output of both of those commands

Thanks for sharing that information @arbuzzer. A few other questions:

• Based on the screenshot it looks like you are were running those commands in your root directory (i.e. C:UsersYour_User) — is that the correct location of this repository, or is it possibly in a different directory? If you are storing this repository in a different location you will need to run Git commands from within that directory that contains your repository.
• Is this a repository that you just freshly cloned to your local machine using GitHub Desktop?

It would also be helpful if you could run the following two commands within the repository directory to provide more configuration information about your local repository:

git branch -a
git config -l —list

Please let me know the output of both of those commands

I did all the actions described on the forums again and that’s what I did. Expected(Blue Box) and Actual(Red Box) Behavior.

Источник

reference broken #3838

error: cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: unable to resolve reference ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: reference broken
From https://github.com/herio5154/stargoon
! [new branch] master -> origin/master (unable to update local ref)

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

@herio5154 thanks for the feedback! It looks like something with the underlying Git repository has broken, leaving it in an invalid state.

I think these steps should get you back to a happy place, but take a backup of your repository before running any of these commands, just in case.

I’ll explain the intent behind each step as we go along. This assumes using Git Bash, but if you are using a different shell let me know which and I’ll tweak it.

Git stores refs and other Git data on disk under the .git folder, and it looks like the value of whatever origin/master entry Git was tracking is now invalid. This will remove the file to hide it from Git locally.

This tells Git to go and fetch whatever it can find from the remote.

This ensures your local master is tracking whatever is currently on origin/master , which should put Git back into a happy place.

Closing this out due to inactivity. @herio5154 let us know if there’s anything else we can do to address the problem!

This actually worked for me too, thanks! ❤️

This worked for me too

Hello,
I’m having the same problem in GitHub Desktop, but I’m fairly new to using it and don’t have Git installed, only GitHub Desktop. Could you explain how to approach solving the problem assuming a little bit less pre-existing knowledge & without having Git installed? I’m working on Windows 10 and have the latest version of GitHub Desktop.
Thank you!

@cfandel are you seeing the same exact error output? If you can share the specific error message I can verify that the solution provided will work for you.

Could you explain how to approach solving the problem assuming a little bit less pre-existing knowledge & without having Git installed?

Unfortunately this problem is not resolvable within GitHub Desktop since it requires running a few specific Git commands. Since you do not have Git installed, you will need to download it from here:

Once you install Git you can launch it directly from GitHub Desktop and follow the steps @shiftkey provided. I would recommend making a backup of the repository, and let me know if you run into any specific issues.

The other workaround would be to clone a fresh copy of the repository, which will not have the broken references. If your local repository and remote repository are up-to-date with each other then that would be the easiest solution.

Thanks for the quick response!
The files on my computer (these are called the local files yes?) are up to date, but the files on GitHub are NOT up to date (because I made changes locally and then wasn’t able to push them).
In GitHub Desktop, the push button has changed to ‘Publish branch’ and I get the following error:

error: cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: unable to resolve reference ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: reference broken From https://github.com/cfandel/gottesacker ! [new branch] master -> origin/master (unable to update local ref)

I downloaded Git and tried the steps above, but get this result:

$ rm.git/refs/remotes/origin/master bash: rm.git/refs/remotes/origin/master: No such file or directory

When you say clone a fresh copy of the repository, does that mean taking the copy on my computer and replacing everything currently on GitHub with the files I have, or vice-versa? If it means preserving the version on my computer, that’s a fine solution, but otherwise it will result in losing a bunch of work.
Also, in the long term, if this issue happens again, it would be best to know how to repair it without having to clone a fresh copy no?

**Note: I wasn’t able to see where to launch Git from GitHub Desktop? So I tried this in Git Bash launched from the Windows Search Bar.

@cfandel it looks like you may have missed a space between the rm (remove) command and the file path:

**Note: I wasn’t able to see where to launch Git from GitHub Desktop? So I tried this in Git Bash launched from the Windows Search Bar.

You can go to the menu and select File > Open in Command Prompt . That will launch CMD — if you would prefer to use Git Bash you can change this setting by going to File > Options > Advanced and choosing Git Bash from the Shell dropdown.

If it means preserving the version on my computer, that’s a fine solution, but otherwise it will result in losing a bunch of work.

In that case we will want to get things working with the local repository, since a fresh clone will not have your local changes.

@cfandel it may actually be that you were not in the correct directory when you ran the command — if you open the repository in the command line from within GitHub Desktop it will drop you right into the correct directory. If you open Git Bash separately it will launch into your User directory, and you will need to use cd /path/to/repository to change to the correct directory.

Thanks so much for the help!
I opened Command Prompt from GitHub Desktop (though it’s under the Repository menu not the File menu), and tried again. If I understand correctly, all Git commands run from Command Prompt have to be preceded by the word «git»? And if they are run from Git Bash, the command is exactly the same but without the preceding «git», but I need to make sure to be in the correct directory first?

Unfortunately I’m still not having any success with the steps above.
Here are the commands I tried and the results (note that I am now in the correct directory I think):

C:UsersChloeDocumentsGitHubgottesacker>rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
‘rm’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
This means I need to tell Command Prompt that I want to use Git commands right?
So I tried adding a preceding «git»:
C:UsersChloeDocumentsGitHubgottesacker>git rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
And get this result:
fatal: pathspec ‘.git/refs/remotes/origin/master’ did not match any files

If I try skipping to the next step I get this:
C:UsersChloeDocumentsGitHubgottesacker>git fetch error: cannot lock ref ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: unable to resolve reference ‘refs/remotes/origin/master’: reference broken From https://github.com/cfandel/gottesacker ! [new branch] master -> origin/master (unable to update local ref)

***EDIT:
I tried this exact same process, but by opening Git Bash from within GitHub Desktop, and it seems to have worked! However, I’m still not at all clear about why — what is the difference between doing it in Command Prompt and doing it in Git Bash?

@cfandel I’m glad you were able to workaround the issue!

‘rm’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
This means I need to tell Command Prompt that I want to use Git commands right?

rm is a built-in program that’s part of most Unix shells. The equivalent command in Command Prompt is del but they accept different parameters, so be mindful of the shell you are using to run commands.

However, I’m still not at all clear about why — what is the difference between doing it in Command Prompt and doing it in Git Bash?

Git Bash has an rm included in it’s environment, so the command works fine there. git rm is a Git-specific command to remove files from within a Git repository, and isn’t a replacement for rm .

Источник

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 -> 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  -> origin/split-css  (unable to update local ref)

30 Answers

$ git gc --prune=now
$ git remote prune origin

git-gc - Cleanup unnecessary files and optimize the local repository

git gc [--aggressive] [--auto] [--quiet] [--prune=<date> | --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.

git-remote - manage set of tracked repositories

git remote prune [-n | --dry-run] <name>

           Deletes all stale remote-tracking branches under <name>. These stale branches have already been
           removed from the remote repository referenced by <name>, but are still locally available in
           "remotes/<name>".            

rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
git fetch

git gc --prune=now

git gc --prune=now

git remote prune origin

git pull

git fetch --prune
git fetch --all
git pull

rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master

git fetch

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master

repo.gitrefsremotesoriginmaster

git gc --prune=now

[[email protected]] - [~/code/driving] - [Wed May 10, 02:58:25]
[I]> 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 -> origin/user/janek/integration/20170505  (unable to update local ref)
From github.com:zooxco/driving
[[email protected]] - [~/code/driving] - [Wed May 10, 02:58:30]
[I]> git fetch --prune
 - [deleted]               (none)     -> origin/user/janek/integration

[fetch]
    prune = true

rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
git fetch
git gc --prune=now
git remote prune origin

rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/master
git fetch

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master
git pull

git remote prune origin

git pull origin Branch_Name

! [new branch]      split-css  -> origin/split-css  (unable to update local ref)

git remote update --prune

rm -rf vendor/*
git gc --prune=now
git pull
composer clear-cache
composer update my/package

# v2 git bundle
9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d HEAD
9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d refs/heads/master
9a3184e2f983ba13cc7f40a820df8dd8cf20b54d refs/heads/master

PACK.......p..x...Kj.0...: (and so on...)

 # 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 ->
 # origin/feature/v1.6.9-api-token-bot-reader

 # and push your local changes
 git push

git remote -v