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?

score 278 · Answer 1 · edited May 03 '18 at 10:13

278

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.

edited May 03 '18 at 10:13

Manos Nikolaidis

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answered Jul 04 '16 at 22:09

petrelharp

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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. – Stavarengo Aug 04 '17 at 15:21
4

`git prune` worked for me, a way to delete data that has accumulated in Git but is not being referenced by anything useful. – Sven Malvik Jun 15 '18 at 09:24
Executing them solved my problem: `$ mv .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD /tmp` `$ git gc` `git prune` – David Rauca Jul 19 '18 at 07:27
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I suspect the best way would be @WilQu's answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/49944297/660339). Can anyone confirm this? – Ivan Perez Apr 27 '19 at 16:18
removing those file out of .git folder, than `git gc` worked for me – Vino May 14 '19 at 13:58
@Ryan you should check if this work for you, for me solved the problem. – Lorenzo Solano Martinez Jul 01 '19 at 14:14
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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. – L. J. Jan 01 '20 at 07:49

score 134 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '18 at 14:44

134

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.

answered Apr 20 '18 at 14:44

WilQu

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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. – Devy Oct 28 '19 at 23:37
this worked for me with git version 2.33.0 – Lex Scarisbrick Sep 14 '21 at 15:40

score 110 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 11 '17 at 16:08

110

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

answered Sep 11 '17 at 16:08

Trenton

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That was my fix as well – Dan Carlstedt Aug 03 '18 at 16:25
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This was my exact solution. Our team recently changed from using a default branch develop to master as well – jmancherje Nov 27 '18 at 19:41
I had to run `git gc` after this to get everything working again but this fixed it! – Eli Nathan Jan 26 '21 at 13:26
this fixed my issue as well :)))) thanks a lot! – mochadwi Mar 18 '21 at 13:29

score 56 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 19 '21 at 13:15

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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

answered Apr 19 '21 at 13:15

Thawinwats Uggaravisee

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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 – BigMan73 Feb 15 '22 at 15:54

score 27 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 16 '20 at 21:57

27

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.

answered Mar 16 '20 at 21:57

Conal Da Costa

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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;` – amcvitty Oct 16 '20 at 02:41

Joshua Cleetus · Answer 6 · 2020-12-18T14:12:44.860

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git update-ref -d [wrong reference here]

This will fix this issue.

For above issue use following code:

git update-ref -d 'refs/remotes/origin/HEAD'

In case you are getting error with .git like below:

error: bad ref for .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/Dec/session-dynatrace-logs 6

You can copy the path starting from refs like below:

git update-ref -d 'refs/remotes/origin/Dec/session-dynatrace-logs 6'

edited Dec 18 '20 at 14:12

answered Oct 27 '20 at 18:56

Joshua Cleetus

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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* – Cauchy Schwarz Apr 19 '21 at 04:05
This gives me `error: refusing to update ref with bad name '.git/logs/HEAD 2'`. – 2540625 Jul 28 '21 at 01:46

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 10 '21 at 12:26

I hit this error because the default branch was changed from master to main. I used a mix of info given by a few of the answers above to resolve it:

cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD

Returned:

ref: refs/remotes/origin/master

To fix it, I ran:

git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main

I ran this again to double-check:

cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/HEAD

Which returned:

ref: refs/remotes/origin/main

Then git gc and git prune worked just fine.

To see what happens I also tried:

git remote set-head origin --auto

Which returned:

origin/HEAD set to main

And it really solves the problem by identifying the ref automatically.

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 03 '20 at 01:46

The cause of this for me was working in a compressed folder in Windows. When the folder was uncompressed, it corrupted the pack files, cascading other odd issues, such as not being able to prune nonexistent branches.

The only fix was to wipe out the working directory and clone the repo remote(s) again. Luckily, I could still push and pull updates to ensure nothing was lost. All is well now.

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 09 '21 at 16:25

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My problem occurred with a specific branch.
Apparently the reference file for branch was corrupted. I fixed it like that.

git checkout main
// I removed the file .git\refs\heads\branch_xpto
git pull
git checkout branch_xpto

answered Feb 09 '21 at 16:25

Rafael Pizao

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score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 17 '19 at 17:46

0

If you're using git worktrees, make sure you're doing a

git worktree prune

before running

git gc

I had a worktree get corrupted and this seemed to do the trick after removing the corrupted worktree. git prune by itself didn't seem to work.

answered Dec 17 '19 at 17:46

JeffP

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

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