Git rename from index.lock to index failed

Question

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'.

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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

Solution 3

In my case I had to close the VS code which I opened with code . from a WSL Ubuntu terminal.

Solution 4

It can be a real issue, try to run your Terminal as Administrator instead of user. Worked for me

Solution 5

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.

View more solutions

Comments

[James McDonnell]

Or read here, this should work: stackoverflow.com/questions/3380805/…

[Tom Hunter]

Thanks @JamesMcDonnell. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I can do this either.. (see my update).

[James McDonnell]

You could delete your .git folder, create a new repo and pull.

[BrainStone]

I guess it's not even required to do git reset HEAD. It worked for me without that!

[Rob]

Agreed, I think it's just the ssh-agent.exe process that locks the index file. No need to do anything other than kill it.

[Matt]

Worked for me by deleting both .git/index and .git/index.lock

[101]

Ah, also using Google Drive. Seems to go away after a second or two.

[A. Blesius]

Hi, normally it shouldn't be necessary to specify --mixed, as it is the standard already: git-scm.com/docs/git-reset#git-reset---mixed

[Agilanbu]

try to highlight the keywords and be clear with the format it will help to reach out your answer for others

[Dimagog]

@A.Blesius yes, --mixed is the default, but I made it explicit because reset command could look scary.

[Olov]

I encountered the same problem, and the process which had a lock for me was Visual Studio Code (or something related to it), because when I shut it down, it worked as expected.

[Lightning3]

@DimagogThanks you so much for the tip. In my case: Visual studio in admin mode, and GitKraken in non-admin mode, so I got the message in GitKraken, because of permissions! Thanks!

[Elliott Collins]

For posterity, version conflicts in Dropbox can also cause this, but it won't go away on its own. In either case, the "conflicted copy" of .git/index just needs to be removed.

[Daniel Butler]

This was my issue. The place that .git was located was in a protected folder

[Laurence]

exactly what happened to me. but it's still a pain that I have to close vscode to do a git commit.

[Heinrich Ulbricht]

For me it was explorer.exe although I did not have the actual folder or any sub folder open. Closing all Explorer windows was enough to solve the problem for me.

[Günter Zöchbauer]

In my case closing VSCode fixed it.

[AlwaysLearning]

After doing this, I was able to git add ., but got the error again when doing git commit