fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref

Question

I am getting fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref. whenever I try to commit.

I have tried

echo ref: refs/heads/master >.git/HEAD

but its not working

Also tried

git commit

its not working either from below sources

Git 'fatal: No such ref: HEAD' git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref

Please help in..All my commit history is also gone

hi @Flows its giving same "fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref." if I try git log then its giving me fatal: your current branch appears to be broken — idurvesh, Jun 02 '16 at 14:46
Looking around internet, I found it may be due to permission access. Could you give 777 permissions to the `.git` folder recursively ? — Flows, Jun 02 '16 at 14:55
I think 777 command is for remote directory? My problem is locally...getting this error when I do commit.... — idurvesh, Jun 02 '16 at 15:01
I know the problem is usually on remote repository but you can try that in your local repository too. — Flows, Jun 02 '16 at 15:22
Assuming you can use command line, be sure to have root permission, or connect with sudo user. Move to your git repository (`cd`) and type `sudo chmod 777 -R .git`. — Flows, Jun 02 '16 at 15:34

score 50 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 24 '21 at 19:53

50

I have also encountered the same issue, and have resolved it as follows:

Clone your same project in some other folder.
Copy the (hidden) .git folder of the cloned project.
Finally replace the .git folder of the original project with the one that you've have copied.

Edit

Why does this happen?

Broken git repositories are often the result of file system corruption due to abrupt power failure or other abnormalities.
Since git stores all the information inside .git folder and if they are corrupted git can no longer recognize the repository.

Caveats

Everything in your previous .git folder will be gone. Configurations like remote reference name(s) must be set up again.

edited Aug 24 '21 at 19:53

Jovial Joe Jayarson

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answered Jun 16 '16 at 05:55

Pravesh Khatri

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2

This actually worked for me too, I had a repo that randomly could no longer find any branches (not even master), but nothing else I did (git checkout master, git checkout -, etc) worked. A solution as simple as recloning and then copying the git folder fixed it. This even let me keep my changes, so I didn't need to redo them. – CDerrig Mar 05 '17 at 21:06
where can I find the .git folder? – Andrey May 22 '19 at 04:28
@Andrea: Go to to your application directory and type `ls -a`. you'll find one. – Pravesh Khatri May 22 '19 at 07:51

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 12 '18 at 16:08

My problem was with

git init
git add .

Tried

git reset
  fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref.
git reset --hard
  fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref.

Solved with

git rm -r --cached .

Enviroment

git version 1.7.5.4

Ubuntu 11.10

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 27 '20 at 23:03

I got this issue due a disk failure. I know this is an old question but maybe it can help someone. In my case I had a local branch where I was working on before my repo got corrupted so re-cloning the repo was not suitable for me. Any answer here or in other post helped me, except this little piece of code I found here. I just ran this command in the root of my repo:

echo ref: refs/heads/master >.git/HEAD

After that, I was able to excecute, git branch, git commit and all other git commands.

I hope this can help someone!

Sorry to say, but this issue actually made issues worse for me, now I see: `fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git` — mfisher91, Jan 22 '21 at 20:09

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 23 '18 at 12:28

3

In my case, I ended up with two branches with the same name after a branch renaming. By removing one of them in .git/refs/heads it all went back to normal.

answered Mar 23 '18 at 12:28

Michael Schmid

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 14 '19 at 14:20

I had this problem after a Blue Screen of Death incident - so it was similar to what Sudip Bhandari said above.

I looked in .git/refs/heads/<mybranch> and found that the entry was corrupted (illegible). This file is supposed to contain the full commit-id of the HEAD branch.
I cloned a new repository and copied .git/refs/heads/<mybranch> from the new checkout over the corrupted one (I guess I could've just repaired it by pasting in a recent commit-id from stash or whatever).
back in the original repository, I did git rm -r --cached . and git reset --hard to clean up and then found all was back to normal again.

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 10 '21 at 03:15

0

Backup your existing .git folder.
Clone your project from git repository into new folder.
Copy .git from new project folder and replace your original .git folder.

edited May 10 '21 at 03:15

Simas Joneliunas

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answered May 09 '21 at 11:51

user15878180

1

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 08 '21 at 07:39

WHY - fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref?

git is not able to figure out the reference and you may see this issue if the reference head is corrupted.

Suppose originally you checked out a feature branch out of the master branch and because of some failure you hit this issue. You can check the ref of the header file it should be corrupted or no value in it. Ideally, this file supposes to keep the commit hash value.

cat .git/refs/heads/<my-branch>

SOLUTION - Replacing the corrupted ref or ref value will solve the problem.

Goto .git/ref/heads/ and check if you already have some branch there and copy the commit hash value to your branch.

cat .git/refs/heads/<branch_with_commit_details> > .git/refs/heads/<my-branch>

OR you can clone the source code in another directory and copy the same hash value to my-branch

score -1 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 26 '21 at 08:13

-1

Just remove the files under .git/refs/heads. It works for me

answered Apr 26 '21 at 08:13

Amit Jain

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score -3 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 20 '19 at 05:07

-3

The best solution for this problem:

'fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref'

Open the project on Eclipse IDE
Goto project Team menu and select Switch to, finally you can switch your current detached branch to your choice now.

As attached screenshot below:

answered Jun 20 '19 at 05:07

Chiranjhivi Ghimire

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The user didn't mention Eclipse. – mfisher91 Jan 22 '21 at 20:11

fatal: Failed to resolve HEAD as a valid ref

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