Git: "Corrupt loose object"

Question

Whenever I pull from my remote, I get the following error about compression. When I run the manual compression, I get the same:

$ git gc
error: Could not read 3813783126d41a3200b35b6681357c213352ab31
fatal: bad tree object 3813783126d41a3200b35b6681357c213352ab31
error: failed to run repack

Does anyone know, what to do about that?

From cat-file I get this:

$ git cat-file -t 3813783126d41a3200b35b6681357c213352ab31
error: unable to find 3813783126d41a3200b35b6681357c213352ab31
fatal: git cat-file 3813783126d41a3200b35b6681357c213352ab31: bad file

And from git fsck I get this ( don't know if it's actually related):

$ git fsck
error: inflate: data stream error (invalid distance too far back)
error: corrupt loose object '45ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a'
fatal: loose object 45ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a (stored in .git/objects/45/ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a) is corrupted

Can anyone help me decipher this?

Answer 1

In my case, the problem was that my terminal/laptop had crashed in the middle of checking out a branch and something corrupted just that branch. I couldn't git log/status/branch/etc. on that branch.

Most of the other answers here suggest removing the .git directory and recloning the repo from the remote, but this is a very destructive action. Before doing that, try instead resetting the problematic branch to your master/main/whatever branch (or, if master/main/etc. is your corrupted branch, try resetting it to some other ref whose name you remember):

git reset --hard master

Or try just checking out that branch.

This got me out of the corrupted branch state, allowing me to see my logs/stashes/branches/statuses/etc. Granted, I lost all of my commits on that branch, but this is much better than losing all work on all branches and having to reclone the repo.

Answer 2

The way I fixed it was to find the .git file in the folder and then try to resubmit everything in GitHub. Because I was OK with what I had on the local computer, it was OK for me to have the old .git file removed was OK. However, having it backed out somewhere is a much better idea because, as someone mentioned, it could cause side effects, so please try other methods first. But this worked for me.

git remote add <name of repo such as main> <URL>
git commit -m"First commit."
git push --set-upstream <name of repo such as main> <name of repo such as main>

Answer 3

I had the exact same error and managed to get my repo back without losing my changes.

I do not know if it could work for others as corruption reason can be multiple, but it's worth trying

I:

• Made several backups of the corrupt git repository just in case
• Cloned the lasted pushed version from the remote repository
• Copied all the files from the corrupt .git folder EXCEPT all files related to HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, ORG_HEAD etc ... the most important are the refs, obj, and index
• Ended up with a valid history, but corrupt index, applied the solution from this post How to resolve "Error: bad index – Fatal: index file corrupt" when using Git

And my repository was back working ...

To make sure I did not push anything wrong, I cloned again from the remote, checked-out the changes I wanted to save from the restored repository, and comited them fresh.

Answer 4

Have the same issue after my linux mint crash, and I press power button to shutdown my laptop, that's why my .git is corrupt

find .git/objects/ -empty -delete

After that, I get error fatal: Bad object head. I just Reinitialized my git

git init

And fetch from remote repo

git fetch

To check your git, use

git status

And it's work again. I don't lose my local changes, so I can commit without rewriting code

Answer 5

I have had the same issue before. I simply get passed it by removing the object file from the .git/objects directory.

For this error below.

$ git fsck
error: inflate: data stream error (invalid distance too far back)
error: corrupt loose object '45ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a'
fatal: loose object 45ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a (stored in .git/objects/45/ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a) is corrupted

Solution:

1. Go to your top directory and unhide the .git folder

• On windows, you can do this by running this command on cmd: attrib +s +h .git

2. Then go to .git/objects folder

3. As mentioned on the error message above (stored in .git/objects/45/ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a) is corrupted you can see that the object is found on a director called "45". Therefore, go to the directory .git/objects/45/

4. Finally find the object named ba4ceb93bc812ef20a6630bb27e9e0b33a012a and delete it.

Now, you can go ahead and check with git status or git add . your change and proceed.

Answer 6

I had a similar issue on a Windows 10 computer with onedrive backing up my documents folder where I have my git repositories.

Looking at the object in the git object directory I did not see a green checkmark but the blue sync icon for that file. All other object files appeared to have the green checkmark. Playing around, trying things, I tried selecting the option always keep this folder on this device but got an error: error 0x80071129 the tag present in the reparse point buffer is invalid.

This link (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/error-0x80071129-the-tag-present-in-the-reparse/b8011cee-98c5-4c33-ba99-d0eec7c535a0) suggests to run chkdsk /r /f as an admin to fix the issue (have to reboot computer). I did that and it fixed my issue.

Answer 7

This seems to be an issue with Dropbox or symlinking folders out of Dropbox for me. Probably the same for any of the other similar services. When I go to git push I'd get the Corrupt loose object error. For me, on macOS Big Sur, the fix was simply to make a recursive copy of the repo to a directory outside of Dropbox. I believe this caused Dropbox to pull the live files for the broken dynamic references. After the copy I was immediately able to git push without error.

Answer 8

A garbage collection fixed my problem:

git gc --aggressive --prune=now

It takes a while to complete, but every loose object and/or corrupted index was fixed.

Answer 9

My computer crashed while I was writing a commit message. After rebooting, the working tree was as I had left it and I was able to successfully commit my changes.

However, when I tried to run git status I got

error: object file .git/objects/xx/12345 is empty
fatal: loose object xx12345 (stored in .git/objects/xx/12345 is corrupt

Unlike most of the other answers, I wasn't trying to recover any data. I just needed Git to stop complaining about the empty object file.

Overview

The "object file" is Git's hashed representation of a real file that you care about. Git thinks it should have a hashed version of some/file.whatever stored in .git/object/xx/12345, and fixing the error turned out to be mostly a matter of figuring out which file the "loose object" was supposed to represent.

Details

Possible options seemed to be

1. Delete the empty file
2. Get the file into a state acceptable to Git

Approach 1: Remove the object file

The first thing I tried was just moving the object file

mv .git/objects/xx/12345 ..

That didn't work - Git began complaining about a broken link. On to Approach 2.

Approach 2: Fix the file

Linus Torvalds has a great writeup of how to recover an object file that solved the problem for me. Key steps are summarized here.

$> # Find out which file the blob object refers to
$> git fsck
broken link from    tree 2d9263c6d23595e7cb2a21e5ebbb53655278dff8
           to    blob xx12345
missing blob xx12345

$> git ls-tree 2d926
...
10064 blob xx12345    your_file.whatever

This tells you what file the empty object is supposed to be a hash of. Now you can repair it.

$> git hash-object -w path/to/your_file.whatever

After doing this I checked .git/objects/xx/12345, it was no longer empty, and Git stopped complaining.

Answer 10

The answer of user1055643 is missing the last step:

rm -fr .git
git init
git remote add origin your-git-remote-url
git fetch
git reset --hard origin/master
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master

Answer 11

Your best bet is probably to simply re-clone from the remote repository (i.e., GitHub or other). Unfortunately you will lose any unpushed commits and stashed changes, however your working copy should remain intact.

First make a backup copy of your local files. Then do this from the root of your working tree:

rm -fr .git
git init
git remote add origin [your-git-remote-url]
git fetch
git reset --mixed origin/master
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master

Then commit any changed files as necessary.

Answer 12

I got this error after my (Windows) machine decided to reboot itself.

Thankfully my remote repository was up to date, so I just did a fresh Git clone...

Answer 13

You don't need to clone and you don't need to lose your uncommited changes. Just remove .git folder with git rm -rf .git/ and then restore the git folder by initiating a new repo, setting remote and resetting head. I have added instructions for restoring removed git folder here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/67610397/7584643

Answer 14

The solution offered by Felipe Pereira (above) in addition to Stephan's comment to that answer with the name of the branch I was on when the objects got corrupted is what worked for me.

find .git/objects/ -size 0 -exec rm -f {} \;
git fetch origin
git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/${BRANCH_NAME}

Answer 15

What I did not to lose other unpushed branches: A reference to the broken object should be in refs/heads/<current_branch>. If you go to .git\logs\refs\heads\<current_branch> you can see that the last commit has the exactly same value. I copied the one from the previous commit to the first file and it solved the problem.

Answer 16

This problem usually occures when using various git clients with different versions on the same git checkout. Think of:

• Command line
• IDE build-in git
• Inside docker / vm container
• GIT gui tool

Make sure you push with the same client that created the commits.

Answer 17

Create a backup and clone the repository into a fresh directory

cp -R foo foo-backup
git clone git@url:foo foo-new

(optional) If you are working on a different branch than master, switch it.

cd foo-new
git checkout -b branch-name origin/branch-name

Sync changes excluding the .git directory

rsync -aP --exclude=.git foo-backup/ foo-new

Answer 18

I encountered this once my system crashed. What I did is this:

(Please note your corrupt commits are lost, but changes are retained. You might have to recreate those commits at the end of this procedure)

• Backup your code.
• Go to your working directory and delete the .git folder.
• Now clone the remote in another location and copy the .git folder in it.
• Paste it in your working directory.
• Commit as you wanted.

Answer 19

Looks like you have a corrupt tree object. You will need to get that object from someone else. Hopefully they will have an uncorrupted version.

You could actually reconstruct it if you can't find a valid version from someone else by guessing at what files should be there. You may want to see if the dates & times of the objects match up to it. Those could be the related blobs. You could infer the structure of the tree object from those objects.

Take a look at Scott Chacon's Git Screencasts regarding git internals. This will show you how git works under the hood and how to go about doing this detective work if you are really stuck and can't get that object from someone else.

Answer 20

simply running a git prune fixed this issue for me

Answer 21

When I had this issue I backed up my recent changes (as I knew what I had changed) then deleted that file it was complaining about in .git/location. Then I did a git pull. Take care though, this might not work for you.

Answer 22

I solved this way: I decided to simply copy the uncorrupted object file from the backup's clone to my original repository. This worked just as well. (By the way: If you can't find the object in .git/objects/ by its name, it probably has been [packed][pack] to conserve space.)

Answer 23

Working on a VM, in my notebook, battery died, got this error;

error: object file .git/objects/ce/theRef is empty error: object file .git/objects/ce/theRef is empty fatal: loose object theRef (stored in .git/objects/ce/theRef) is corrupt

I managed to get the repo working again with only 2 commands and without losing my work (modified files/uncommitted changes)

find .git/objects/ -size 0 -exec rm -f {} \;
git fetch origin

After that I ran a git status, the repo was fine and there were my changes (waiting to be committed, do it now..).

git version 1.9.1

Remember to backup all changes you remember, just in case this solution doesn't works and a more radical approach is needed.

Answer 24

I had the same problem (don't know why).

This fix requires access to an uncorrupted remote copy of the repository, and will keep your locally working copy intact.

But it has some drawbacks:

• You will lose the record of any commits that were not pushed, and will have to recommit them.
• You will lose any stashes.

The fix

Execute these commands from the parent directory above your repo (replace 'foo' with the name of your project folder):

1. Create a backup of the corrupt directory:
   cp -R foo foo-backup
2. Make a new clone of the remote repository to a new directory:
   git clone git@www.mydomain.de:foo foo-newclone
3. Delete the corrupt .git subdirectory:
   rm -rf foo/.git
4. Move the newly cloned .git subdirectory into foo:
   mv foo-newclone/.git foo
5. Delete the rest of the temporary new clone:
   rm -rf foo-newclone

On Windows you will need to use:

• copy instead of cp -R
• rmdir /S instead of rm -rf
• move instead of mv

Now foo has its original .git subdirectory back, but all the local changes are still there. git status, commit, pull, push, etc. work again as they should.

Answer 25

To me this happened due to a power failure while doing a git push.

The messages looked like this:

$ git status
error: object file .git/objects/c2/38824eb3fb602edc2c49fccb535f9e53951c74 is empty
error: object file .git/objects/c2/38824eb3fb602edc2c49fccb535f9e53951c74 is empty
fatal: loose object c238824eb3fb602edc2c49fccb535f9e53951c74 (stored in .git/objects/c2/38824eb3fb602edc2c49fccb535f9e53951c74) is corrupt

I tried things like git fsck but that didn't help. Since the crash happened during a git push, it obviously happened during rewrite on the client side which happens after the server is updated. I looked around and figured that c2388 in my case was a commit object, because it was referred to by entries in .git/refs. So I knew that I would be able to find c2388 when I look at the history (through a web interface or second clone).

On the second clone I did a git log -n 2 c2388 to identify the predecessor of c2388. Then I manually modified .git/refs/heads/master and .git/refs/remotes/origin/master to be the predecessor of c2388 instead of c2388. Then I could do a git fetch. The git fetch failed a few times for conflicts on empty objects. I removed each of these empty objects until git fetch succeeded. That has healed the repository.

Answer 26

Just remove .git folder and add it again. This simple solution worked for me.

Answer 27

I just had a problem like this. My particular problem was caused by a system crash that corrupted the most recent commit (and hence also the master branch). I hadn't pushed, and wanted to re-make that commit. In my particular case, I was able to deal with it like this:

1. Make a backup of .git/: rsync -a .git/ git-bak/
2. Check .git/logs/HEAD, and find the last line with a valid commit ID. For me, this was the second most recent commit. This was good, because I still had the working directory versions of the file, and so the every version I wanted.
3. Make a branch at that commit: git branch temp <commit-id>
4. re-do the broken commit with the files in the working directory.
5. git reset master temp to move the master branch to the new commit you made in step 2.
6. git checkout master and check that it looks right with git log.
7. git branch -d temp.
8. git fsck --full, and it should now be safe to delete any corrupted objects that fsck finds.
9. If it all looks good, try pushing. If that works,

That worked for for me. I suspect that this is a reasonably common scenario, since the most recent commit is the most likely one to be corrupted, but if you lose one further back, you can probably still use a method like this, with careful use of git cherrypick, and the reflog in .git/logs/HEAD.

Answer 28

I was getting a corrupt loose object error as well.

./objects/x/x

I successfully fixed it by going into the directory of the corrupt object. I saw that the users assigned to that object was not my git user's. I don't know how it happened, but I ran a chown git:git on that file and then it worked again.

This may be a potential fix for some peoples' issues but not necessary all of them.

Answer 29

We just had the case here. It happened that the problem was the ownership of the corrupt file was root instead of our normal user. This was caused by a commit done on the server after someone has done a "sudo su --".

First, identify your corrupt file with:

$> git fsck --full

You should receive a answer like this one:

fatal: loose object 11b25a9d10b4144711bf616590e171a76a35c1f9 (stored in .git/objects/11/b25a9d10b4144711bf616590e171a76a35c1f9) is corrupt

Go in the folder where the corrupt file is and do a:

$> ls -la

Check the ownership of the corrupt file. If that's different, just go back to the root of your repo and do a:

$> sudo chown -R YOURCORRECTUSER:www-data .git/

Hope it helps!

Answer 30

I just experienced this - my machine crashed whilst writing to the Git repo, and it became corrupted. I fixed it as follows.

I started with looking at how many commits I had not pushed to the remote repo, thus:

gitk &

If you don't use this tool it is very handy - available on all operating systems as far as I know. This indicated that my remote was missing two commits. I therefore clicked on the label indicating the latest remote commit (usually this will be /remotes/origin/master) to get the hash (the hash is 40 chars long, but for brevity I am using 10 here - this usually works anyway).

Here it is:

14c0fcc9b3

I then click on the following commit (i.e. the first one that the remote does not have) and get the hash there:

04d44c3298

I then use both of these to make a patch for this commit:

git diff 14c0fcc9b3 04d44c3298 > 1.patch

I then did likewise with the other missing commit, i.e. I used the hash of the commit before and the hash of the commit itself:

git diff 04d44c3298 fc1d4b0df7 > 2.patch

I then moved to a new directory, cloned the repo from the remote:

git clone git@github.com:username/repo.git

I then moved the patch files into the new folder, and applied them and committed them with their exact commit messages (these can be pasted from git log or the gitk window):

patch -p1 < 1.patch
git commit

patch -p1 < 2.patch
git commit

This restored things for me (and note there's probably a faster way to do it for a large number of commits). However I was keen to see if the tree in the corrupted repo can be repaired, and the answer is it can. With a repaired repo available as above, run this command in the broken folder:

git fsck 

You will get something like this:

error: object file .git/objects/ca/539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d is empty
error: unable to find ca539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d
error: sha1 mismatch ca539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d

To do the repair, I would do this in the broken folder:

rm .git/objects/ca/539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d
cp ../good-repo/.git/objects/ca/539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d .git/objects/ca/539ed815fefdbbbfae6e8d0c0b3dbbe093390d

i.e. remove the corrupted file and replace it with a good one. You may have to do this several times. Finally there will be a point where you can run fsck without errors. You will probably have "dangling commit" and "dangling blob" lines in the report, these are a consequence of your rebases and amends in this folder, and are OK. The garbage collector will remove them in due course.

Thus (at least in my case) a corrupted tree does not mean unpushed commits are lost.