Recovering from missing objects?

	Hi all,

I start to see suspicious messages about missing objects in one of my working repositories:

| vixen$ git gc
| error: Could not read c406ab0be69c912ea59233595a071478103cdad8
| fatal: bad tree object c406ab0be69c912ea59233595a071478103cdad8
| error: failed to run repack
| vixen$ 

My setup:
  - I have one reference repository (cloned from Linus' linux-2.6.git)
  - I have several working repositories, cloned using --reference to my
    reference repository. A working repository has several remotes (cloned from
    other Linux kernel repositories).

I always do a `git pull' in the reference repository, before doing a `git remote update' in a working repository. When I do `git gc' in a working repository, it cleans up all objects that are not in the reference repository. Hence I only need to care about backup of the .git directories in the working repositories (the stuff I'm working on), and not about the reference repository (its objects are publicly available and replicated all over the world).

I identified the missing object listed above to be part of a remote repository. Doing a `git remote update' doesn't fetch it again, as git is too smart and thinks I already have everything.

If I clone the remote repository, I have the object in the new clone. However, how do I get the missing object back into the .git directory of my working repository? Is there an easy way to do that, or should I just recreate my working repository from scratch, and reimport anything I can recover?

As for the cause of the problem: most probably I once added the remote repository to my reference repository, and removed it later, causing all objects to be removed during a subsequent gc.

Thanks for your answers!

With kind regards,

Geert Uytterhoeven Software Architect

Sony Techsoft Centre Europe The Corporate Village · Da Vincilaan 7-D1 · B-1935 Zaventem · Belgium

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