Git and nasty "error: cannot lock existing info/refs fatal"

Question

After cloning from remote git repository (at bettercodes) I made some changes, commited and tried to push:

git push origin master

Errors with:

error: cannot lock existing info/refs
fatal: git-http-push failed

This case regards already existing repository.

What I did before, was:

git config --global http.sslVerify false
git init
git remote add [url]
git clone
change data
git commit

At 'bettercodes' I have no access to git log.

I'm using Windows. The detailed error was:

C:\MyWorkStuff\Projects\Ruby\MyProject\>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

I cloned before, then changed the code and committed.

Two possible reasons: a) Another instance of git is running (kill all git processes or reboot) b) .git folder was created as Administrator (try administrator command line for the operation) — FractalSpace
– FractalSpace, Commented Oct 28, 2016 at 19:42
For me, I resolved the error by calling git fetch before git pull. — Levi Fuller
– Levi Fuller, Commented Feb 2, 2018 at 20:03
In my case the problem was the cases of the directory name. The branch name was "origin/no-ticket", but in my local dir the name was NO-TICKET so I just renamed it and it worked. — Constantino Cronemberger
– Constantino Cronemberger, Commented Oct 28, 2021 at 11:15

Sebastialonso · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-22 19:29:00Z

1633

For me this worked (won't change in remote):

git remote prune origin

Since this answer seems to help a lot of people, I dug a little bit into what actually happens here. What this will do is 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.

edited Jun 22, 2021 at 19:29

Sebastialonso

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answered Apr 6, 2017 at 11:04

arno_v

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18 Comments

arno_v Over a year ago

I've added some background info, but I must honestly say I don't know exactly why and how this works :)

Throw Away Account Over a year ago

This is exactly what git suggests doing, but I was reluctant to do it because the command sounds like it does something to the remote.

Stanley Mohlala Over a year ago

I ran git gc --prune=now

Sat Thiru Over a year ago

This is the SCARIEST git cmd I have run in a while. (PS: it worked)

Nelson Benítez León Over a year ago

git pull --prune will do the same but with a less scary command.

|

Ingo Karkat · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-08 18:04:39Z

782

You want to try doing:

git gc --prune=now

See https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-gc.html

edited Jul 8, 2016 at 18:04

Ingo Karkat

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answered Jul 8, 2016 at 17:47

kiran.gilvaz

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10 Comments

Assaf Israel Over a year ago

Is --prune=now the same as --prune=all? If so, the documentation warns that you may lose unanchored objects. If there are unanchored objects you should probably try to reconcile them before pruning.

Phil Brubaker Over a year ago

Life saver, thank you. git pull was stuck with the similar error message.

Alexander Over a year ago

It helped for "git error:cannot lock ref" exception on fetch. Thanks a lot!

Keyur Golani Over a year ago

This worked for me. But then I had to keep executing the same command each time I use a git command that deals with remote. git remote prune origin resolved the issue once and for all.

Charlie Reitzel Over a year ago

For me, git remote prune origin didn't work but git gc --prune=now did the trick.

|

Dark Star1 · Accepted Answer · 2024-06-20 13:42:34Z

252

This happened to me when my git remote (bitbucket.org) changed their IP address. The quick fix was to remove and re-add the remote, then everything worked as expected. If you're not familiar with how to remove and re-add a remote in git, here are the steps:

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

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]:account-name/repo-name.git
Set your local branch to track origin:
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/<your-remote-branch> <local-branch>

edited Jun 20, 2024 at 13:42

Dark Star1

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answered Mar 28, 2016 at 18:22

johnnyclem

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11 Comments

Marquinho Peli Over a year ago

I've tried everything else, like git gc, git prune, rm 'file with lock error', git update server info, etc. Only this answer worked for me. Sometimes it's like a windows reboot, reboot and it'll work. Same here, just remove and add the repo again, and everything goes fine ;)

fotinsky Over a year ago

After the above procedure, I also needed to tell git to track the remote branch again with e.g.: git branch -u origin/master

ThomasMcLeod Over a year ago

This blew away all my remote tracking info in .git/config and didn't actually work.

gabore Over a year ago

@ThomasMcLeod it blew away my remote tracking too, but I regain those with git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/<branch> <local_branch> one by one

Rigo Sarmiento Over a year ago

This one definitely worked best for me. The prune stuff only worked for a few next commands, but after that the nasty problem would come back. This solution really did the trick.

|

MiKr13 · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-03 08:39:32Z

138

This is what I did to get rid of all the lock ref issues:

git gc --prune=now
git remote prune origin

This is probably what you only need to do too.

More about git gc command here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gc

More about git remote prune here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-remote#Documentation/git-remote.txt-empruneem

edited Mar 3, 2021 at 8:39

MiKr13

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answered Jun 17, 2020 at 13:03

aliibrahim

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2 Comments

coster128 Over a year ago

This one did it for me, thanks!

Echo Lumaque Jul 18 at 18:53

Worked for me, thanks!

akansh tayal · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-26 13:36:51Z

99

Running command git update-ref -d refs/heads/origin/branch fixed it.

answered Jul 26, 2018 at 13:36

akansh tayal

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4 Comments

ndeslandes Over a year ago

That command did the trick for me as well, although my remote branch ref was slightly different: git update-ref -d refs/remotes/origin/my_branch

th3uiguy Over a year ago

This worked for me, it appears this was a case sensitivity issue. There were two branches with the same name that were pushed to origin by another git user, one had all lower case and one that was title case.

Andrew Over a year ago

This fixed it... Caused by 2 branches with same name different cases.

Moebius Over a year ago

That solved my problem

MiKr13 · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-03 09:34:09Z

58

What worked for me was:

Remove .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/branch
Remove .git/refs/remotes/origin/branch
Run git gc --prune=now

More about git gc command here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gc

edited Mar 3, 2021 at 9:34

MiKr13

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answered Jan 8, 2020 at 12:06

emirc

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4 Comments

Ankit Kesharwani Over a year ago

Worked like a charm. If anyone is facing issue with the file/folder name branch then it is actually referring to all the branch name files/folders. I hope this helps!

MiKr13 Over a year ago

It'll be great if you add documentation links too. like for gc command

SeanMC Over a year ago

I mean, I do this, same error.

kevinvanleer Over a year ago

I tried git prune and git gc commands mentioned in other answers. I had to remove logs and refs before I could pull successfully.

jave.web · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-25 13:30:34Z

As a reference for Visual Studio Code (vscode, code) (and possibly other IDEs)

I had to do command: Git: Fetch (Prune)

Command line alternative should be: git fetch --prune

Then restart the whole IDE.

And to give some perspective I will quote BitBucket's docs:

What’s the Difference Between Git Prune,
Git Fetch --prune, and Git Remote Prune?

git remote prune and git fetch --prune do the same thing: delete the refs to branches that don't exist on the remote. This is highly desirable when working in a team workflow in which remote branches are deleted after merge to main. The second command, git fetch --prune will connect to the remote and fetch the latest remote state before pruning. It is essentially a combination of commands:
git fetch --all && git remote prune
The generic git prune command is entirely different. As discussed in the overview section, git prune will delete locally detached commits.

P.M · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-27 08:01:12Z

33

I fixed this by doing the following

git branch --unset-upstream
rm .git/refs/remotes/origin/{branch}
git gc --prune=now
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/{branch} {branch}
#or git push --set-upstream origin {branch}
git pull

This assuming that your local and remote branches are aligned and you are just getting the refs error as non fatal.

edited Jul 27, 2017 at 8:01

P.M

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answered Nov 8, 2016 at 13:28

FrankMonza

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Comments

Dharmesh Mansata · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-22 04:46:39Z

32

Before pull you need to clean your local changes. following command help me to solve.

git remote prune origin

and then after

git pull origin develop

Hopes this helps!

answered Jul 22, 2020 at 4:46

Dharmesh Mansata

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3 Comments

asa Over a year ago

it doesn't solve the issue for me. Still get the same error

rogaa Over a year ago

@AfonsoSchulzAlbrecht I needed to do the solution stackoverflow.com/a/59645527/4502379 provided by emirc

jp06 Over a year ago

I still had an issue pulling after the prune commands in other answers. git pull origin develop fixed an (unable to update local ref) error for me, thanks!

Stephen Rauch · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-14 04:17:27Z

28

I had this issue because I was on a branch that had a similar name to an upstream branch. i.e. the upstream branch was called example-branch and my local branch was called example-branch/backend. The solution was changing the name of my local branch like so:

git branch -m <new name goes here>

edited Feb 14, 2018 at 4:17

Stephen Rauch♦

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answered Feb 14, 2018 at 3:47

George Armstrong

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2 Comments

Benjamin Basmaci Over a year ago

Had a similar problem. Had an upstream branch "questlines/layout" and a local branch "questlines" (Using Gitkraken). Just renamed "questlines" to "questlines/bugfix" and it worked as it did before.

Koen Over a year ago

This solution was the first that worked for me. Had many similar branch names. Created a new branch with an entirely different name and it worked. git remote prune didn't work for me. Thank you!

Zsolt Botykai · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-03 18:21:33Z

15

This is probably resolved by now. But here is what worked for me.

Location:
- If locked repository is on the server-side:
  1. ssh to your git repository on the server.
  2. Login as user which has permissions to modify the repository and navigate to the repository on your server.
- If locked repository is local only:
  1. Open the git console and navigate to the repository directory.
  2. Run this command:
```
git update-server-info
```
Fix the permissions on your (remote or/and local) repository if you have to. In my case I had to chmod to 777 and chown to apache:apache
Try to push again from the local repository:
```
git push
```

edited Mar 3, 2012 at 18:21

Zsolt Botykai

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answered Mar 2, 2012 at 18:51

WolfTail

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Comments

SeanMC · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-12 15:58:00Z

10

None of these worked for me. Some solutions would work for the first git pull afterwards, but the error would re-appear for every pull after. So here's what I did.

I edited the .git/packed-refs in my repo, and removed the line for the ref/repo that git didn't like. Then I did a fetch+pull again, and the error seems to be gone.

answered Jul 12, 2023 at 15:58

SeanMC

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2 Comments

ouflak Over a year ago

Nice quick solution that worked for me. Welcome to the 2k club!

Abhishek Bedi Over a year ago

Works like a charm!

schmunk · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-21 21:34:37Z

9

This is how it works for me.

look up the Apache DAV lock file on your server (e.g. /var/lock/apache2/DAVlock)
delete it
recreate it with write permissions for the webserver
restart the webserver

Even faster alternative:

look up the Apache DAV lock file on your server (e.g. /var/lock/apache2/DAVlock)
Empty the file: cat /dev/null > /var/lock/apache2/DAVlock
restart the webserver

edited Jan 21, 2014 at 21:34

answered Jul 9, 2012 at 19:06

schmunk

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1 Comment

djneely Over a year ago

This was my issue. Thanks for the post. I ran the remove and permissions all in one shot. #> rm DAVLock; touch DAVLock; chown www-data.www-data DAVLock; chmod 755 DAVLock; service apache2 restart

Makoto · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-09 19:13:09Z

8

This sounds like a permissions issue - is it possible you had two windows open, executing with separate rights? Perhaps check ownership of the .git folder.

Perhaps check to see if there is an outstanding file lock open, maybe use lsof to check, or the equivalent for your OS.

edited Jul 9, 2012 at 19:13

Makoto

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answered Jul 11, 2011 at 21:18

Josh

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Comments

CodingYourLife · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-12 09:54:09Z

6

In my case a branch was moved to a subdirectory and the directory was called as the branch. Git was confused by that. When I deleted the local branch (in SourceTree just with right click delete) everything worked as usual.

answered May 12, 2016 at 9:54

CodingYourLife

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Comments

Denis · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-02 11:52:37Z

6

I had a typical Mac related issue that I could not resolve with the other suggested answers.

Mac's default file system setting is that it is case insensitive.

In my case, a colleague obviously forgot to create a uppercase letter for a branch i.e.

testBranch/ID-1 vs. testbranch/ID-2

for the Mac file system (yeah, it can be configured differently) these two branches are the same and in this case, you only get one of the two folders. And for the remaining folder you get an error.

In my case, removing the sub-folder in question in .git/logs/ref/remotes/origin resolved the problem, as the branch in question has already been merged back.

edited Jan 2, 2021 at 11:52

answered Dec 11, 2020 at 16:10

Denis

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2 Comments

ps2goat Over a year ago

I had the same problem on Windows. Someone created a second branch with the same name but different case. I had to delete one of the two branches on the git server for it to work.

Hasnaa Ibraheem Over a year ago

Using mac too and removing the folder didn't fix the issue, changing the upper case in folder name (branch name before the / in the refs/remotes folder) to lower has resolved the issue for me

ttfreeman · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-30 22:12:38Z

5

Run git fetch --all before git pull. That should solve the problem.

answered Jun 30, 2020 at 22:12

ttfreeman

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Comments

Colin · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-04 21:30:18Z

4

In my case after getting this message I did the checkout command and was given this message:

Your branch is based on 'origin/myBranch', but the upstream is gone.
  (use "git branch --unset-upstream" to fixup)

After running this command I was back to normal.

answered Sep 4, 2019 at 21:30

Colin

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Comments

Liam · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-12 14:41:06Z

4

Update:

You might need to edit your ~/.netrc file:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/git-core/+bug/293553

Original answer:

Why did you disable ssl? I think this might have to do with you not being able to push via https. I'd set it back and try to push again:

git config –global http.sslVerify true

edited Jan 12, 2022 at 14:41

Liam

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answered Jul 11, 2011 at 21:35

ralphtheninja

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Comments

Buddy · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-20 15:29:55Z

4

For me it was happening when I try to create a new branch with a name like this one:

master/pre-upgrade

changing it to another name like:

pre-upgrade/master

did the trick!

Some additional info on this issue

Git stores the branch information as files in a folder structure where the last string after the / is a file that contains the commit SHA# of the head of the branch.

This means that a branch called

a/b/c

will be stored in

.git/refs/heads/a/b/c

If you would try to add a branch named

a/b/c/d

git will try to store that in

.git/refs/heads/a/b/c/d

but that wont be possible because b is a file and cant store other files in it.

I.E consider git branch names as paths because they are used as paths by git.

edited Nov 20, 2022 at 15:29

Buddy

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answered Mar 25, 2021 at 20:24

Omar Dulaimi

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Comments

mitesh keswani · Accepted Answer · 2024-01-08 12:11:19Z

4

I was getting error on

git pull

So, I tried this it worked for me

git pull origin <branch_name>
git pull origin feature/my_branch

answered Jan 8, 2024 at 12:11

mitesh keswani

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Comments

user2347763 · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-09 16:56:03Z

3

Aside from the many answers already supplied to this question, a simple check on the local repo branches that exist in your machine and those that don't in the remote, will help. In which case you don't use the

git prune

command as many have suggested.

Simply delete the local branch

git branch -d <branch name without a remote tracking branch by the same name>

as shown in the attached screenshot using -D to force delete when you are sure that a local branch does not have a remote branch tracked.

answered Nov 9, 2020 at 16:56

user2347763

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Comments

ScottyBlades · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-22 07:07:30Z

3

I got this issue when I tried to create a branch that starts with a current branch. I had a branch named develop and I tried to create a branch called develop/myFeature.

answered Sep 22, 2021 at 7:07

ScottyBlades

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Comments

alphaplus · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-19 09:40:08Z

3

Case 1: Let check branches from git-server if they are duplicated or not.

Example: two branches below are duplicated:

    - upper_with_lower
    - UPPER_with_lower

---> Let consider removing one of them.

Case 2: The branch you are pushing are duplicated with other branch.

edited Apr 19, 2022 at 9:40

answered Sep 21, 2021 at 7:38

alphaplus

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Comments

Devansh Maurya · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-20 15:52:03Z

3

It can also happen that if you are naming branch using group words like feat, bugfix, e.g., feat/awesome-feature and there already exists a branch at origin with name feat, i.e., origin/feat, your push will be rejected with error "refs/heads/feat exists; cannot create refs/heads/feat/awesome-feature".

answered Mar 20, 2023 at 15:52

Devansh Maurya

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Comments

Ivan Danilov · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-11 21:18:50Z

2

Check that you (git process actually) have access to file .git/info/refs and this file isn't locked by another process.

answered Jul 11, 2011 at 21:18

Ivan Danilov

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1 Comment

Iulian Onofrei Over a year ago

How do you check that?

user11464384 · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-07 11:18:13Z

2

I had this problem, when I was trying to create a new feature branch that contained name of the old branch, e.g. origin - branch1 and I wanted to create branch1-feature. It wasn't possibble, but branch1/feature was already.

answered May 7, 2019 at 11:18

user11464384

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Comments

Marc Wäckerlin · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-10 14:54:41Z

2

I had the same error message, root cause was a rewrite of the history (branch renaming).

That worked for me:

git remote prune origin

Source: https://codedaily.in/git-error-cannot-lock-refs/

answered Jun 10, 2021 at 14:54

Marc Wäckerlin

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Comments

equi · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-12 15:01:19Z

2

I had a similar issue that totally confused me. I had a local branch named test and was trying to fetch and checkout remote branch named test/some-changes.

Fix was just to remove a stale test branch, and I could fetch and checkout the remote one.

answered Oct 12, 2021 at 15:01

equi

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1 Comment

Florian F Over a year ago

Thanks!!! I wanted to push 'hotfix/something' and the remote had a branch 'hotfix'. No other solution given here worked. Removing the remote 'hotfix' did it.

Bayram Binbir · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-07 14:25:39Z

2

Following command always works for me ✅ without any issue

git pull origin <yourBranchName>

answered Jan 7 at 14:25

Bayram Binbir

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