Re: "fatal: index-pack failed" on git-clone

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 8, 2009, 16:42 UTC
Message-ID: <7viqi386th.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <C92DE6F3-4F35-469F-AC28-4DDD1D8105C2@uchicago.edu>

Fritz Anderson <fritza@uchicago.edu> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> I get the error "fatal: index-pack failed" when I attempt to clone a  
> remote bare repository. The repository works well on other machines,  
> including the repository's own.
>
> The repository lives on a version of Mac OS X I'm not allowed to talk  
> about (I repeat: It works well for working copies on other machines,  
> and on its own). The client is RHEL5. Git is version 1.6.3 on both  
> machines, and was built from the tarball.

Looking at the output of the trace, I do not think that you have to worry about people asking for a copy of your repository in order to diagnose this issue, as I suspect that even a much smaller toy repository will fail for you in the same way.

> Here's the debug transcript:

> ===========
> $ sudo GIT_TRACE=1 git clone myusername@remote.example.com:/Users/ 
> myusername/scientia/scientia.git

I have heard that pseudo resets the PATH so you are invoking "git" from one of those standard system PATH, perhaps /usr/bin.

Show 12 quoted lines

> trace: built-in: git 'clone' 'myusername@remote.example.com:/Users/ 
> myusername/scientia/scientia.git'
> Initialized empty Git repository in /srv/scientia/.git/
> trace: run_command: 'ssh' 'myusername@remote.example.com' 'git-upload- 
> pack '\''/Users/myusername/scientia/scientia.git'\'''
> Password:
> trace: run_command: 'index-pack' '--stdin' '-v' '--fix-thin' '-- 
> keep=fetch-pack 17580 on local.example.com'
> trace: exec: 'git' 'index-pack' '--stdin' '-v' '--fix-thin' '-- 
> keep=fetch-pack 17580 on local.example.com'
> trace: exec failed: No such file or directory
> trace: exec 'index-pack' failed: No such file or directory

This is saying that "git" on the local side (the one you are running "clone" on) couldn't find its "index-pack" subcommand. Why?

I think this is an issue with your RHEL5 box, not the MacOS box. A quick check that might be useful is to type:

	$ git index-pack
	$ sudo git index-pack