Recovering the index after a git crash?

Hi,

I'm debugging a git assertion failure, which leaves a .git/index.lock in the way. After running the failed command, git refuses to do anything in this directory, complaining with:

  fatal: unable to create '.git/index.lock': File exists

What I'm doing then is just "rm .git/index.lock". Is it safe to do it? I guess I should just make sure there's no git process running, but is there anything else to check?

I'll write a FAQ entry on the wiki with answers, and that would probably be a good idea to give indication to the user directly in the error message too, otherwise, the problem can be blocking for beginners.

Thanks,

<my life> I had to support students using SVN for a month in January, and even when SVN says:

  svn: run 'svn cleanup' to remove locks (type 'svn help cleanup' for details)

it's still hard for many students to understand that they have to run "svn cleanup" and prefer sending me a mail saying "it doesn't work anymore" :-(. </my life>