How to handle git gc fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD error?

Question

I randomly hit this today while trying to run Git garbage collect:

$ git gc
fatal: bad object refs/remotes/origin/HEAD
error: failed to run repack
         


        

Answer 1

git update-ref -d [wrong reference here]

This will fix this issue.

For above issue use following code:

git update-ref -d 'refs/remotes/origin/HEAD'

In case you are getting error with .git like below:

error: bad ref for .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/Dec/session-dynatrace-logs 6

You can copy the path starting from refs like below:

git update-ref -d 'refs/remotes/origin/Dec/session-dynatrace-logs 6'