How to handle git gc fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD error?

Question

I randomly hit this today while trying to run Git garbage collect:

$ git gc
fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
error: failed to run repack

How do I deal with this?

Solution 1

I don't understand the ramifications of this, but as suggested in this thread, when I encountered this I just did

$ mv .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD /tmp

(keeping it around just in case) and then

$ git gc

worked without complaining; I haven't run into any problems.

Solution 2

After seeing Trenton’s answer, I looked at my .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD and saw that it was also pointing to an old branch that is now deleted.

But instead of editing the file myself, I tried Ryan’s solution:

git remote set-head origin --auto

It automatically set the file to the new branch, and git gc worked fine after that.

Solution 3

The problem that I ran into (which is the same problem that @Stavarengo mentioned in this comment above) is that the default remote branch (develop in my case) had been deleted, but was still referenced in .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD.

Opening .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD in my editor showed this:

ref: refs/remotes/origin/develop

I carefully edited it to point at my new default branch and all was well:

ref: refs/remotes/origin/master

The clue that tipped me off was that running git prune showed this error:

> git prune
warning: symbolic ref is dangling: refs/remotes/origin/HEAD

Solution 4

Thank god I found this https://makandracards.com/chris-4/54101-fixing-a-git-repo

fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
error: failed to run repack

This may happen if upstream branches have been removed and your origin is pointing to it. You can confirm this by running:

cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD

If it is pointing to a branch that doesn't exist, running:

git remote set-head origin --auto

followed by

git gc

will fix it

Solution 5

Looks like your symbolic-refs might be broken... Try the replacing it with your default branch like this: For example, my default branch is master

$ git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/master
$ git fetch --prune
$ git gc

That should fix it.

View more solutions

Comments

[Stavarengo]

It worked for me and I think I got into this problem because I changed the default branch from master to another one called develop. Days before I change it back from develop to master and I deleted the old default branch develop, but in my working directory, the file .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD was still pointing to refs/remotes/origin/develop which no longer exists. In this situation removing the file did work.

[Sven Malvik]

git prune worked for me, a way to delete data that has accumulated in Git but is not being referenced by anything useful.

[David Rauca]

Executing them solved my problem: $ mv .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD /tmp $ git gc git prune

[Dan Carlstedt]

That was my fix as well

[jmancherje]

This was my exact solution. Our team recently changed from using a default branch develop to master as well

[Ivan Perez]

I suspect the best way would be @WilQu's answer (stackoverflow.com/a/49944297/660339). Can anyone confirm this?

[Vino]

removing those file out of .git folder, than git gc worked for me

[Lorenzo Solano Martinez]

@Ryan you should check if this work for you, for me solved the problem.

[Devy]

Yep, this works for me - as I was in the exact same scenario. git remote set-head $REMOTE --auto in my case, $REMOTE is the remote alias, not the default "origin", because I have multiple remotes setup.

[L. J.]

In my case git gc showed several files as fatal: bad object .... I moved each of them away into /tmp. Then, git gc worked and all was ok.

[amcvitty]

I just did nearly this and it worked. Here's what I actually ran git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/master; git fetch --prune; git prune; git gc;

[Eli Nathan]

I had to run git gc after this to get everything working again but this fixed it!

[mochadwi]

this fixed my issue as well :)))) thanks a lot!

[Cauchy Schwarz]

This fixes error cannot update the ref 'refs/remotes/origin/mybranch': unable to create directory for '.git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/mybranch': No such file or directory

[2540625]

This gives me error: refusing to update ref with bad name '.git/logs/HEAD 2'.

[Lex Scarisbrick]

this worked for me with git version 2.33.0

[BigMan73]

Very helpful, thanks. This is a common issue when switching the head branch from master to main, as seen lately with many projects due to removing non inclusive terminology

[mokagio]

git remote set-head origin --auto && git gc for convenient copy-paste in one go :)

[Joshua Cleetus]

make sure the path is correct

[saran3h]

I got mv: cannot stat .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD: No such file or directory

[andrew lorien]

The error also instructed "Please correct the root cause and remove .git/gc.log". This solution worked for me, only after removing that file.