Trouble setting up git with my GitHub Account error: could not lock config file

Question

I\'m getting this error when trying to set the global config:

$ git config --global user.name \"Your Name Here\"
error: could not lock config file /pathto/fi         


        

Answer 1

In Windows: Right click on "Git Bash" icon -> Run as Administrator. it helped me.

Git tries to create a config file on disk C:/ but it has no permission to do that.

Answer 2

I started getting this error after windows upgrade. My Home variable somehow removed after windows upgrade. Issue resolved by adding HOME variable as "C"\Users\myusername".

Answer 3

A bit like in "Trouble setting up Tower with my GitHub Account - error: could not lock config file", check how that ~/.gitconfig file has been created.
Ie: with which rights associated to it?

Make also sure your $HOME variable is correctly set when you are executing the git config --global command.

Answer 4

Just use the following command if you wanna set configuration in system level:

$ sudo git config --system user.name "my_name"

Answer 5

In my case, the .git/config file was created not in my $HOME directory, but inside my repository on .git/config.lock

Deleting the file fixed the problem. The file is created, when I switch branches with git checkout -f branchname and files from a recently created submodule were overwritten by git checkout.

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/branchname
error: could not lock config file .git/config: File exists
error: Unable to write upstream branch configuration
hint: 
hint: After fixing the error cause you may try to fix up
hint: the remote tracking information by invoking
hint: "git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/branchname".

Answer 6

This could be caused by the presence of ~/.gitconfig.lock It's possible this file could be an artifact of a previously running git that was aborted for some reason, e.g. ansible timed out or ^C