error: Unable to append to .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/master: Permission denied

From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Date: Apr 28, 2009, 07:31 UTC
Message-ID: <20090428073138.GA9094@elte.hu>

I had a portion of a repo owned by root accidentally, and the next time i pulled as user mingo Git gave me this warning and suggestion:

 aldebaran:~/git> git pull
 error: Unable to append to .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/master: Permission denied
 From e2:git
  ! 66996ec..95110d7  master     -> origin/master  (unable to update local ref)
  * [new tag]         v1.6.3-rc2 -> v1.6.3-rc2
 error: some local refs could not be updated; try running
  'git remote prune origin' to remove any old, conflicting branches

Obviousy Git cannot update the ref there so the failure is OK, but the git-remote advice it gives is confusing IMHO: the 'git remote prune origin' cannot fix anything. (and it is clear from the fetch permission failure that there's no chance to fix anything here.)

I suspect there are other, more typical failure modes where that advice is useful - just wanted to point out that it's confusing here.

	Ingo