How to resolve "Error: bad index – Fatal: index file corrupt" when using Git

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After git init, I added and committed a few files, made some changes, added and committed. Set up the git daemon (running under Cygwin on WinXP) and cloned the repository once. Now, I get this error with the cloned repository:

$ git status
error: bad index file sha1 signature
fatal: index file corrupt

Is there any way to fix this, other than getting a new copy of the repository?

Output answered 12/7, 2009 at 11:23 Comment(1)

Is this in the cloned repository, or in the original repository? Did the clone command output any errors? – Jansenism 12/7, 2009 at 11:27

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1691

If the problem is with the index as the staging area for commits (i.e. .git/index), you can simply remove the index (make a backup copy if you want), and then restore index to version in the last commit:

On OSX/Linux/Windows(With Git bash):

rm -f .git/index
git reset

On Windows (with CMD and not git bash):

del .git\index
git reset

(The reset command above is the same as git reset --mixed HEAD)

You can alternatively use lower level plumbing git read-tree instead of git reset.

If the problem is with index for packfile, you can recover it using git index-pack.

Jollify answered 12/7, 2009 at 12:28 Comment(21)

I accidentally did a :w! in a :Gstatus (from fugitive.vim). This answer saved me a lot of hair pulling. – Plectron 29/2, 2012 at 17:46

I know we don't like "me too" messages -- but "me too". Equivalent in Windows is erase /s .git\index, I needed a erase .git\index.lock too. – Werth 15/6, 2012 at 7:23

I had to use rm .git/index as I received an ambiguous warning using -f – Range 16/7, 2012 at 21:43

Hi, I had the same problem with find and replace but git reset tells me there are two pack files in .git/objects/pack/ that can't be accessed. Do you have an idea ? – Hackle 28/1, 2013 at 16:44

wouldn't it be safer to use git reset --keep instead? In the Tower Git Cheat Sheet it is explained as: Reset your HEAD pointer to a previous commit and preserve uncommitted local changes – Ison 13/6, 2013 at 13:30

It didn't exist when I was writing this answer... Anyway git reset --keep is safer form of git reset --hard; git reset --mixed doesn't touch workdir at all. – Auroreaurous 13/6, 2013 at 19:15

Nothing changed for me... version 1.9.1 – Milewski 10/11, 2015 at 6:30

How can you tell if it's a problem with the Staging Area or the Packfile? – Vasques 23/3, 2017 at 16:45

Are those commands issued from the Windows CMD prompt or from the BASH Git command prompt? – Vasques 23/3, 2017 at 19:37

Followed first instructions Windows. Did not resolve problem. Followed second instructions but got a response (for git index-pack) with usage info. Apparently Git needs some parameter supplied. Tried 'git reset --keep' and got error : You do not have a valid HEAD. fatal: could not reset index file to revision HEAD. Now my "view log" doesn't even work. – Vasques 23/3, 2017 at 19:44

@ClayNichols: neither of those instructions affects HEAD, so your problem is unrelated to the index. If git log <branch> works, or git show <some commit> works, or if it is something in .git/logs/ you should be able to recover at least some of history... and there is also git fsck --lost-found. – Auroreaurous 23/3, 2017 at 21:18

worked perfectly for me. tried those commands in git shell of gitHub – Yuriyuria 25/9, 2017 at 13:58

For me on Windows it was rm .git/index and after git reset --keep – Izettaizhevsk 8/12, 2017 at 11:17

I had to do a git checkout . on the repository root after because it kept saying that some files were modified (git diffwas of no help because it treated the files as binary). – Fez 23/10, 2018 at 15:21

The git reset fails with fatal: loose object <uuis> (stored in .git/objects/b2/<uuid>) is corrupt. – Guayule 11/2, 2019 at 0:32

Folks doubting if there changes will be deleted , no they will be not after doing "git reset" . – Betsybetta 6/1, 2020 at 11:6

I manually deleted the index file under the.git folder and then did "git reset" and it worked for me. – Rustic 6/6, 2020 at 23:24

Got this error on VS code after the update and just used the CMD to run the commands and successfully reset the index – Meadow 5/7, 2020 at 22:30

The fun in getting to the same helpful answer again, and see that I already upvoted last time =] – Scrivener 4/8, 2020 at 7:36

@Ison git reset --keep also throws fatal: index file corrupt – Rechabite 18/8, 2020 at 3:15

'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – Lavina 9/6, 2021 at 23:29

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You may have accidentally corrupted the .git/index file with a sed on your project root (refactoring perhaps?) with something like:

sed -ri -e "s/$SEACHPATTERN/$REPLACEMENTTEXT/g" $(grep -Elr "$SEARCHPATERN" "$PROJECTROOT")

to avoid this in the future, just ignore binary files with your grep/sed:

sed -ri -e "s/$SEACHPATTERN/$REPLACEMENTTEXT/g" $(grep -Elr --binary-files=without-match "$SEARCHPATERN" "$PROJECTROOT")

Simpson answered 19/3, 2011 at 7:57 Comment(5)

If you don't mind losing changes in .git/index, you can always delete it and recreate with git reset (without --hard!). – Auroreaurous 1/3, 2012 at 12:24

I broke it with # find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/Politician/Legislator/g' {} \; Doing what this answer recommends this would have not broken it in the first place, but the accepted answer repaired the damage that I did do. This is excellent prevention though. – Comparative 11/3, 2015 at 1:34

@RyanMortensen You could try inverting your sed with something like find .git/ -type f -exec sed -i 's/Legislator/Politician/g' {} \; This might help if your .git/ is so corrupted that git reset won't work. Or maybe you want to restore your existing .git/index without deleting it. This will fail, of course, if your original code or index already had some "Legislator"s in it. – Simpson 22/2, 2018 at 19:30

Thank you @Simpson you saved me a lot of trouble - I solved it by inverting the sed by replacing my new_string with my old_string! – Asafetida 11/7, 2018 at 8:20

I refactored my whole project instead of the 'src' folder in IntelliJ and had this problem. This explains why I had such strange errors! – Papillon 30/1, 2019 at 19:36

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I had that problem, and I try ti fix with this:

rm -f .git/index
git reset

BUT it did not work. The solution? For some reason I had others .git folders in sub directories. I delete those .git folders (not the principal) and git reset again. Once they were deleted, everything worked again.

Expiry answered 24/7, 2015 at 13:23 Comment(3)

This answer really resolve problem if you have some .git folders in vendor/ (e.x.) – Laxity 2/12, 2020 at 7:17

'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – Lavina 9/6, 2021 at 23:30

@DynoCris im sure the rm command is for osx/linux... try the other answer above – Packaging 3/2, 2023 at 7:36

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This sounds like a bad clone. You could try the following to get (possibly?) more information:

git fsck --full

Forwardness answered 12/7, 2009 at 11:36 Comment(0)

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Since the above solutions left me with continued problems, I used this dull solution:

clone a new copy of the repo elsewhere
copy the fresh .git directory into the (broken) repo that contained the changes I wanted to commit

Did the trick. Btw, I did a sed on the project root as @hobs guessed. Learned my lesson.

Wale answered 10/2, 2017 at 22:18 Comment(3)

That's brilliant :) – Subarctic 21/2, 2017 at 11:6

It's not really brilliant if you were in the middle of a merge, had created branches or had issued any commits since cloning, or any of a number of other scenarios... Cloning a new copy of the repo is hardly a solution and I daresay it smacks of impatience (best left when in a true pinch). It's much better to actually diagnose what's going on and repair the existing repo's index--that's usually relatively easy to do. Sometimes you can just rename the index file (or delete it, if you're sure you won't ever need it again) and let Git create a new one (using git-reset or git-checkout).. – Thalamus 1/5, 2017 at 3:10

Only solution of all the suggestions that actually worked without major extra steps! Thanks. – Catnap 25/6, 2023 at 7:17

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This worked for me. Although i'm curious of the reason I started getting the errors in the first place. When I logged out yesterday, it was fine. Log in this morning, it wasn't.

rm .git/index

git reset

Praenomen answered 5/8, 2016 at 12:32 Comment(2)

This worked for me, Although It removed all added files from git. I had to run git add for those files – Cartouche 21/10, 2018 at 5:23

'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – Lavina 9/6, 2021 at 23:30

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Note for git submodule users - the solutions here will not work for you as-is.

Let's say you have a parent repository called dev, for example, and your submodule repository is called api.

if you are inside of api and you get the error mentioned in this question:

error: bad index file sha1 signature fatal: index file corrupt

The index file will NOT be inside of a .git folder. In fact, the .git won't even be a folder - it will will be a text document with the location of the real .git data for this repository. Likely something like this:

~/dev/api $ cat .git gitdir: ../.git/modules/api

So, instead of rm -f .git/index, you will need to do this:

rm -f ../.git/modules/api/index git reset

or, more generally,

rm -f ../.git/modules/INSERT_YOUR_REPO_NAME_HERE/index git reset

Mats answered 12/2, 2018 at 20:19 Comment(0)

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This issue can occur when there is a .git directory underneath one of the subdirectories. To fix it, check if there are other .git directories there, and remove them and try again.

Starbuck answered 31/5, 2016 at 19:48 Comment(1)

Several other answers have already provided this information. – Rewrite 26/3, 2018 at 19:49

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Use this if you want to keep your last changed files

rm -f .git/index
git read-tree HEAD

Yacano answered 30/10, 2023 at 21:37 Comment(1)

thanks! your ans works for me. above all answers forcibly removing the index file but still getting the same error. just saved my night!! – Farinaceous 1/11, 2023 at 12:52

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This issue is occoured due to changes in git file or brach. Then you need to run this command on your cmd.

del .git\index
git reset --hard

After run 2 commands your Git Repo is working well

Amandaamandi answered 21/2, 2023 at 8:21 Comment(0)

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None of the existing answers worked for me.

I was using worktrees, so there is no .git folder.

You'll need to go back to your main repo. Inside that, delete .git/worktrees/<name_of_tree>/index

Then run git reset as per other answers.

Silva answered 29/9, 2020 at 8:6 Comment(0)

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Cloning remote repo and replacing the .git folder from it to problematic local directory solved the issue.

Regeneracy answered 17/2, 2022 at 13:14 Comment(0)

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I committed my changes and suddenly my laptop went off due to battery issue and then I got this fatal index corrupt error and Desktop github couldn't locate this git repo. So I ran below mentioned commands using git-bash and everything went back fine.

rm -f .git/index
git reset

Ardeliaardelis answered 29/10, 2022 at 18:3 Comment(0)

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A repo may seem corrupted if you mix different git versions.

Local repositories touched by new git versions aren't backwards-compatible with old git versions. New git repos look corrupted to old git versions (in my case git 2.28 broke repo for git 2.11).

Updating old git version may solve the problem.

Snuffle answered 16/10, 2020 at 16:41 Comment(0)

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On Windows PowerShell, it should be

rm -Force .git/index
git reset

Thorncombe answered 4/9, 2022 at 2:21 Comment(0)

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I had the same error and attempted to fix it as described in the accepted answer. However, immediately after resetting my index in .git/index it became corrupted again.

The problem was, that I was using git bisect yesterday to find a bug, but forgot to run git bisect reset to clean up afterwards at the end of the day. Today as I started making changes git got confused, as it was still in bisect mode and I was attempting to apply changes. I also couldn't just run git bisect reset, because there were already changes.

To fix this problem run the following in the git bash in your root directory:

git stash -m <message>
git bisect reset        # You are now most likely in detached head mode
git checkout <branch>
git stash apply         # If you have multiple stashes, make sure 
                          to apply the correct one

Note that there is no need to remove .git/index and reset the index in this case!

Riviera answered 1/11, 2022 at 11:10 Comment(0)

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Do the following steps.

manually delete the index file from .git folder
Run the command in your project directory git reset

Kinney answered 13/10, 2023 at 8:19 Comment(0)

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When this happened to me due to a BSOD during a git push, I tried rm -f .git/index, followed by git reset, but that made git think all the files on the branch were untracked

Solution: re-clone and manually copy your changes over onto the new clone (eg Winmerge)

Combinative answered 18/3 at 17:52 Comment(0)

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I did a simple trick. I clone the repo to a new folder. Copied the .git folder from the new folder to repo's old folder, replacing .git there.

Robillard answered 1/3, 2020 at 5:32 Comment(4)

Very dangerous because it will delete data like unpublished commits, tags and branches as well as stashes and the reflog. – Aldric 28/5, 2020 at 7:42

Not sure about unpublished commits as I believe they are stored in .git folder and I copied .git folder. I didn't lose anything with this method. I don't know about stashes and reflog to make any comments on that. – Benedick 30/5, 2020 at 21:20

You‘re correct, but maybe you should emphasize that you did a local clone. But my comment ist still true for stashes and reflog. – Aldric 31/5, 2020 at 9:15

Okay, I don't have any experience on that comment anything further, however, it worked for me and some users might find it useful. There no need to downvote it. – Benedick 2/6, 2020 at 2:56

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rm -f .git/index
git reset

More info at https://www.chris-shaw.com/blog/quick-fix-for-git-corrupt-index

Keloid answered 18/11, 2017 at 16:18 Comment(1)

Several other answers have already provided this information. – Rewrite 26/3, 2018 at 19:49

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You can also try for restore to previous version of the file (if you are using windows os)

Calibre answered 2/5, 2014 at 12:7 Comment(1)

Don't put answer you don't know. – Carpic 9/5, 2016 at 7:27

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