git rebase: "error: cannot stat 'file': Permission denied"

Question

I'm using git with Windows Terminal, and made a small commit followed by a large one. I decided to use git rebase to squash the two commits together before pushing them. (I've never done this before.)

So I did:

git rebase -i HEAD~2

This gave me my editor, where I chose to pick the earlier commit and squash the later one. When I saved, git said:

error: cannot stat 'filename': Permission denied

Could not apply sha1 for later commit... initial line of text for that commit

Now:

Neither commit appears when I do git log.
git status tells me I'm "Not currently on any branch."
One file is listed as modified and in the index, and two files are listed as untracked. My first commit had just one file (I think), and my second commit had a good dozen.

What happened!? How do I fix it?

Are you running a virus checker? Sometimes poor quality virus checker programs cause issues like this. — Greg Hewgill
– Greg Hewgill, Commented May 11, 2011 at 21:40
shrug Microsoft Forefront. But I've been using git for many weeks and never had a "cannot stat" problem before. Forefront isn't scanning at the moment. — Ryan Lundy
– Ryan Lundy, Commented May 11, 2011 at 21:43

culix · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-13 14:43:55Z

728

Try closing any programs that have the folder open, such as editors, explorer windows, command prompts, and FTP programs. This always fixes the issue for me on Windows.

edited Jan 13, 2014 at 14:43

culix

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answered Jan 11, 2012 at 3:03

Cameron Wright

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24 Comments

jacobsimeon Over a year ago

I was getting the same error. I just closed visual studio and everything worked.

Michael Martin-Smucker Over a year ago

I closed just about everything I could think of before I remembered the WinLess LESS -> CSS converter hiding in the background.

CodeHxr Over a year ago

Visual Studio held a lock on a nuget package when I tried to merge. Closing VS worked for me.

longda Over a year ago

Most common source of this error, that I've seen on Windows, is Visual Studio locking up the files. As prescribed, close VS before switching branches, merging, etc.

ajm Over a year ago

"Me too" answer for Atom. It seems to lock files and directories; closing it fixes the issue.

|

ManJan · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-21 21:34:37Z

316

Just close your IDE (VISUAL STUDIO/ATOM etc). It might work

edited Mar 21, 2017 at 21:34

answered Sep 25, 2013 at 19:55

ManJan

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4 Comments

Phil Carter Over a year ago

In IntelliJ, stopping the running Tomcat service worked for me. Slightly easier than restarting IDE.

Vince I Over a year ago

I also had a Git Bash window open - closing that worked for me.

LightCC Over a year ago

Any IDE worth it's salt should not be locking anything in a repo... thumbs up!!

mickburkejnr Over a year ago

Hit this issue after checking out in to a temporary branch using Atom on Windows 10. Closing and re-opening Atom resolved the issue for me.

Lara Bailey · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-11 21:41:59Z

217

I've only ever seen this error on Windows and what it seems to mean is that something blocked git from modifying a file at the moment when it tried to a apply a patch.

Windows tends to give processes exclusive access to files when it shouldn't really be necessary, in the past virus checkers have been one source of suspicion but I've never proved this conclusively.

Probably the easiest thing to do is to abort and try again, hoping that it doesn't happen the next time.

git rebase --abort

You can attempt to use git apply and knowledge of what commit git was actually trying to do before doing a git rebase --continue but in all honesty I wouldn't recommend this. Most of the times I've seen this tried there's been a better than evens chance that something gets accidentally missed or messed up.

answered May 11, 2011 at 21:41

Lara Bailey

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17 Comments

Lara Bailey Over a year ago

@Kyralessa: Hmmm, have you tried rebooting? If something is persistently locking that file then after a reboot (or something slightly less drastic that releases the file) you should be able to git checkout -- previously-locked-file and be back up and running.

Ryan Lundy Over a year ago

Well, I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but as best I can tell, VS 2010 was locking the file (odd because it was a .xml doc file). Process Explorer didn't find anything locking that file, but after I exited VS, I was able to use git checkout to get the file back (in git status it was deleted), and now everything is back as it was before I tried to rebase/squash. Perhaps I should try again, though I feel a bit queasy at this point.

Ryan Lundy Over a year ago

Follow-up, many moons later: I haven't had this problem again. Rebasing has worked fine, including even interactive rebasing. It must've been a momentary VS file-locking glitch.

Trev Over a year ago

Closing Visual Studio 2010 fixed it for me too

Augustin Bralley Over a year ago

Atom also apparently locks files. Restarting fixed it.

|

Mike Ruhlin · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-08 22:43:28Z

24

When I see this on my machine, it's worse than just a "some process has the file open". The actual ownership of the file gets jacked up to the point where I (running as administrator) can only access it after rebooting.

Nearest I can tell, IIS is part of the problem. If I switch between two major branches that require a lot of files to modify, git will delete a file or directory (usually DLLs) while IIS is trying to do something or another with it. At this point, the IIS process automatically overwrites the file on disk with a version that's locked and appears to be owned by nobody.

Stopping IIS at this point doesn't do it. Best I've found out to do is to reboot, and remember to stop IIS before changing across major branches in the future.

I know that doesn't really answer the question, but might be helpful to others.

answered Dec 8, 2011 at 22:43

Mike Ruhlin

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5 Comments

Ethan Brown Over a year ago

Hi, Mike...we're having this exact same problem, but it came out of the blue. We've been using the same process on many projects with IIS running, and never had a problem. One day, though, it starts happening...baffling and frustrating. Have you learned any more since you wrote this?

fundead Over a year ago

Thanks for the insight Mike - in my case checking out an old branch with an ASP.NET MVC project which had a different binding URL to the previous branch caused Visual Studio then IIS to hold a lock on some files in the project. Stopping the appropriate apppool in IIS removed the lock.

alexm Over a year ago

IIS was the culprit for me as well; when this pops up a quick iisreset seems to release the file locks.

CharlieB Over a year ago

I've found that the same thing happens with OneDrive: switching branches in a repo stored in OneDrive really confuses it

qdread Over a year ago

This also happened to me on win10, requiring reboot but I didn't test the iisreset solution.

Muhammed Moussa · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-13 16:36:18Z

22

if using vscode, kill terminal and open new one. else maybe close terminal too

answered Jun 13, 2019 at 16:36

Muhammed Moussa

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3 Comments

Mike Upjohn Over a year ago

This was it, looked like a process locking or something

Fenio Over a year ago

Also helped in IntelliJ

shutsman Over a year ago

Reopening WebStorm helped me

romanlv · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-18 18:13:45Z

18

On Windows, it can be a TortoiseGIT process that blocks those files. Open task manager and end process TGitCache.exe.

answered Aug 18, 2011 at 18:13

romanlv

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1 Comment

Ryan Lundy Over a year ago

Good to know, though in my case I'm not using TortoiseGit; I just use the command line.

imbatman · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-15 16:47:24Z

14

I just stumbled upon this thread of answers - this error is such a Bogus error.# error: cannot stat 'reddit/app/views/links': Permission denied

That's all I got - when trying to merge. I read a few of the answers and then came to the realization - all I had to do was close my code editor which happens to be Atom.

Once closing the editor - I ran "git merge" again and boom , it worked.

What a pointless error:(

answered Dec 15, 2015 at 16:47

imbatman

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1 Comment

Nikhil Kuriakose Over a year ago

Thank You! Not everyday will you see the 'right' answer down the list. I recommend this to be marked the right answer. Rather than aborting the current operation, makes sense to solve the real problem.

rgngl · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-27 07:33:10Z

10

If the IDE you use(in case you use one) might have been getting in the way as well. That's what happened to me when using QtCreator.

answered Sep 27, 2011 at 7:33

rgngl

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1 Comment

lancemonotone Over a year ago

This was the case with me, using PhpStorm. Restarting it fixed the error.

Crispy Ninja · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-29 19:34:30Z

10

This happens to me in Windows occasionally

error: cannot stat 'filename': Permission denied

Most often I have multiple instance of bit bash open, and one of the git bash instances is in a directory that doesn't exist in the remote branch I'm pulling from.

Closing all but one instance of git bash solves the issue for me.

answered Jan 29, 2018 at 19:34

Crispy Ninja

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Comments

KennethDale1 · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-29 20:12:57Z

8

If you're running webpack shut it down. Shut down your IDE as well. Should work fine after doing those things.

answered Nov 29, 2018 at 20:12

KennethDale1

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Comments

ahnbizcad · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-03 06:55:46Z

7

This can also happen when you're using SublimeText and the popup window asking you to buy the program is not closed.

edited Dec 3, 2014 at 6:55

answered Sep 30, 2014 at 6:19

ahnbizcad

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2 Comments

Hal Over a year ago

Also got it with Atom just by having the project/file tree open

jsalwen Over a year ago

Like @Hal, my issue was with Atom. It was because a folder in one branch was not in another branch. Closing Atom will fix it, but you can also collapse the project tree (to hide the folder), and that works too.

attolee · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-27 09:53:51Z

7

Using SourceTree in Win 10, fixed the problem by closing Atom editor.

Error reproduce:

In branch B, create a md file, using Atom edit it, save and commit.
Switch to branch A, pull down new commits from server.
Try Switch back, Opps, it says “error: cannot stat 'file': Permission denied”.

answered Jul 27, 2017 at 9:53

attolee

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Comments

Steven Ventimiglia · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-26 05:31:17Z

6

This often happens when you have preprocessing software/applications watching the project, such as Prepros or Codekit. Also, Atom and Sublime (and even Notepad++) can cause this to happen if a file in the project is currently being edited.

The easiest way around the issue is to close whatever has the project files open, merge your branches, and then re-open them to refresh it. This will also avoid any problems where the program is no longer aware of any changes that have happened, forcing you to refresh the project(s) by hand.

answered Mar 26, 2017 at 5:31

Steven Ventimiglia

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1 Comment

frostymarvelous Over a year ago

o man! I was running elm-live in the background. This saved me a ton of headache.

Louis · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-22 10:48:57Z

6

Happened to me on Windows while rebasing inside IntelliJ integrated terminal. I noticed that I had Git bash client instance running in parallel.

Closing Git bash solved the problem.

answered Nov 22, 2018 at 10:48

Louis

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Comments

nhaht · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-10 07:55:58Z

5

Trying to close IDE such as Sublime, VS Code, Webstorm,... and close your programs that have the folder open such as CMD, Powershell, CMDer, Terminal,... will fix the issue.

answered Dec 10, 2020 at 7:55

nhaht

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1 Comment

Jean Libera Over a year ago

I got this error message with Visual Studio 2019 open. After I closed it, the error went away.

mmmdearte · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-16 15:17:41Z

4

I had a similar problem. But it was very simple to resolve. On a Windows machine, my file explorer had a folder open that existed in one branch but not in the other I checked out. Closing the File explorer resolved the problem.

answered Apr 16, 2015 at 15:17

mmmdearte

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Comments

RoundPi · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-03 08:57:43Z

4

I have just had this under Win 7.

$ git stash pop error: cannot stat 'parentFolder/subfolder': Permission denied error: cannot stat 'parentFolder/subfolder': Permission denied

Diagnosis:

1>I went to the subfolder and it's there and I couldn't delete it !

2>Use "process explorer" -> Find -> Find handles and Dlls -> put the "subfolder" name there and search.

Result: It turns out it's XMLSpy has opened one of the xml there, close XML Spy and try stash pop again, it's working now.

answered Jul 3, 2015 at 8:57

RoundPi

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Comments

Mike Walton · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-14 16:50:18Z

4

An alternate solution rather than closing all apps that might be locking the directory as just about every other answer says to do, would be to use a utility that will unlock the files/directory without closing everything. (I hate needing to restart Visual Studio)

LockHunter is the one that I use: https://lockhunter.com/ There are likely others out there as well, but this one has worked great for me.

answered Dec 14, 2018 at 16:50

Mike Walton

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Comments

Perry Tew · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 22:54:59Z

2

My encounter with this problem was caused by my editor, Intellij. As part of its internal version controls, it had gone through and locked all hidden git files. (For various reasons, I was not using the git plugin that comes with Intellij...)

So I opened a normal dos window as Administrator, changed to the directory, and executed

attrib -R /S

That removed the lock on the files and everything worked after that and I could sync my changes using the GitHub windows client.

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 22:54

Perry Tew

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ladygargar · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-22 09:12:54Z

2

I agree with the above "Close Visual Studio" answers.

However, an additional step I had to do even after I'd closed Visual Studio was to manually kill the "devenv.exe" Visual Studio process in Task Explorer. After I had done this I was able to again run in gitbash:

git pull

and the "cannot stat filename" error disappeared. It is perhaps due to a Visual Studio extension keeping the process open for longer even after closing.

answered May 22, 2014 at 9:12

ladygargar

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Comments

BlondinkaBrain · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-01 13:43:22Z

2

I've just had this problem. The thing is - if you had opened file, that was removed\replaced after rebase (you had a branch which doesn't have a this file anymore), the git-system corrupts. So i closed all opened files and then tryied to checkout on some other branch

answered Nov 1, 2016 at 13:43

BlondinkaBrain

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Paul Spaven · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-29 21:20:18Z

1

Same issue on Windows 10 64 Bit, running Git Bash version 2.9.0.windows1 Using Atom as my editor.

This worked for me: I added the Git software folder (for me, this was C:\Program Files\Git) to the exclusions for Windows Defender.

After the exclusion was added, git checkout 'file' worked fine.

answered Jun 29, 2016 at 21:20

Paul Spaven

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raphinesse · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-10 11:38:55Z

1

This error can also be caused by the fact that files are still "locked" because of prior git actions. It has to do with how the Windows filesystem layer works. I once read a nice explanation on this, but I can't remember where.

In that case however, since it is basically a race condition, all you have to do is continue your interrupted rebase process. Unfortunately this happens to me all the time, so I wrote this little dangerous helper to keep my rebases going:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

git checkout .
git clean -df
git rebase --continue

If you want to be extra sure, you can use git rebase --edit-todo to check if the next commit to be applied is really the one that failed to be applied before. Use git clean -dn to make sure you do not delete any important files.

edited Jul 10, 2016 at 11:38

answered Jul 10, 2016 at 11:07

raphinesse

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pscheit · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-30 12:19:40Z

1

Happened to me when in windows, when using photoshop: When I saved an image and then switched to a branch (leaving photoshop with the image opened) i got the git error. Close the image in photoshop and retry

answered Nov 30, 2016 at 12:19

pscheit

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user2441511 · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-13 18:28:49Z

1

If you have the Meld merge tool open, close that. It blocks the file overwriting.

answered Feb 13, 2017 at 18:28

user2441511

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Ric · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-11 04:46:02Z

1

Killing the w3wp.exe process related to the repository fixed this for me.

answered May 11, 2017 at 4:46

Ric

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CuriousGuy · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-18 01:03:25Z

1

In my case, I had a webpack dev server running behind.

answered Sep 18, 2018 at 1:03

CuriousGuy

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Aleksandr Gembinski · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-30 22:51:43Z

0

I got this error when my VS1013 was on a branch targeting 8.1 and I was trying to checkout a 8.0 branch. I needed to tab back to VS and allow it to UpdateAll. Then I could checkout the 8.0 branch without error.

answered Apr 30, 2014 at 22:51

Aleksandr Gembinski

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Shawesome · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-25 20:13:47Z

0

I was also on a Windows machine using Git Shell when I encountered the same error.

However, at the time I had multiple Git terminals open.

The first terminal received the error you posted about above and the other terminal had previously ran the grunt serve terminal command from yeoman (linked below). The second terminal needed to remain open to host a local server instance.

Shutting down all terminal windows running ongoing processes can cause the error to go away.

At least that's what worked for me. After I shut down the second terminal window, I could easily checkout different branches and manipulate files.

Grunt Serve Command - Yeoman.I/O
http://yeoman.io/learning/

answered Sep 25, 2014 at 20:13

Shawesome

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TheNoob · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-15 20:06:45Z

0

I just ran into this issue. Non of the answers here happened to solve this for me.

Ended up being nuget packages I added on a branch that, once switched back to master branch, seemed to not exist. Once I did a merge it would say newtonsoft...xml could not stat. I would go to the file in question and open it but Windows threw an error back saying it can't find the file (even though I was looking right at it)

How I solved this was right click delete the file (which worked but I couldnt open it because windows couldnt find it???) and try to merge again and it solved the problem.

Very strange.

Hope this helps someone later.

answered Jun 15, 2016 at 20:06

TheNoob

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