fatal: Unable to read current working directory: No error

fatal: Unable to read current working directory: No error

[Sean Krauth]

Dear magic git bug solver,

I've encountered a problem and I haven't had any success with my own
troubleshooting or googling so I'd appreciate some help. I noticed the
issue originally when I changed a file name in windows explorer. I was
working on a website and I named my Public folder with a capital P and
wrote my file routes as public. So being a little lazy I decided to
open windows explorer and rename Public to public. This was after I
had used Git Bash to create a local repository. I'm almost positive
this action broke Git. The next time I tried to run Git Bash I got an
error that I believe said something similar to "fatal build error" or
"fatal load error" and Git was really broke.

This seemed like about as good of an excuse as any to update Git. I
was running v. 2.5.1-32-bit and so I downloaded v. 2.6.2-32-bit,
installed it. And it ran, kinda. I no longer seem to have access to
any of my old commits and when I try to "git init" or "git status" I
get the above error, "fatal: Unable to read current working directory:
No error". This error pops up for anything, even new files that never
had a repository.

I'm sorry if this wasn't very well documented or explained, but it
kinda caught me off guard. Any thoughts or possible solutions on how
to get Git running again would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Sean Krauth

Re: fatal: Unable to read current working directory: No error

[Jeff King]

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 07:29:39PM -0400, Sean Krauth wrote:

> This seemed like about as good of an excuse as any to update Git. I
> was running v. 2.5.1-32-bit and so I downloaded v. 2.6.2-32-bit,
> installed it. And it ran, kinda. I no longer seem to have access to
> any of my old commits and when I try to "git init" or "git status" I
> get the above error, "fatal: Unable to read current working directory:
> No error". This error pops up for anything, even new files that never
> had a repository.

That message means that getcwd() is failing. If it were happening in one
place, I'd say to check if there is something funny with your directory
(e.g., bad permissions or something). But if it's happening anywhere, it
sounds like there is some fundamental incompatibility between the build
of Git and your system.

It sounds like you're on a Windows system, and the problem may be
system-specific. You might try asking at the specific Git for Windows
list:

  https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/git-for-windows

though many of those people do frequent this list, too.

-Peff

Re: fatal: Unable to read current working directory: No error

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Sean,

On Tue, 27 Oct 2015, Sean Krauth wrote:

> I've encountered a problem and I haven't had any success with my own
> troubleshooting or googling so I'd appreciate some help. I noticed the
> issue originally when I changed a file name in windows explorer. I was
> working on a website and I named my Public folder with a capital P and
> wrote my file routes as public. So being a little lazy I decided to
> open windows explorer and rename Public to public. This was after I
> had used Git Bash to create a local repository. I'm almost positive
> this action broke Git. The next time I tried to run Git Bash I got an
> error that I believe said something similar to "fatal build error" or
> "fatal load error" and Git was really broke.

If you could boil this down to a [Minimal, Complete & Verifiable
Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve), I will have a look.

Ciao,
Johannes

Re: fatal: Unable to read current working directory: No error

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Peff,

On Wed, 28 Oct 2015, Jeff King wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 07:29:39PM -0400, Sean Krauth wrote:
> 
> > This seemed like about as good of an excuse as any to update Git. I
> > was running v. 2.5.1-32-bit and so I downloaded v. 2.6.2-32-bit,
> > installed it. And it ran, kinda. I no longer seem to have access to
> > any of my old commits and when I try to "git init" or "git status" I
> > get the above error, "fatal: Unable to read current working directory:
> > No error". This error pops up for anything, even new files that never
> > had a repository.
> 
> That message means that getcwd() is failing.

Quite possible. If the path is too long, for example, that might happen.
We have support for `core.longpaths` in Git for Windows, but it will only
help to a certain extent.

> It sounds like you're on a Windows system, and the problem may be
> system-specific. You might try asking at the specific Git for Windows
> list:
> 
>   https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/git-for-windows
> 
> though many of those people do frequent this list, too.

Actually, I would much prefer proper bug reports in the GitHub issue
tracker, as described in https://git-for-windows.github.io/#contribute (in
particular, I would like bug reporters to at least *skim* the guide lines
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/Issue-reporting-guidelines;
you would be surprised how many reports leave out pretty much all
interesting metadata, essentially stating "something broke, somewhere",
hoping that I can reproduce magically some vaguely described issue, which
of course I cannot, but I still have to spend hours just to figure that
out).

I would like to keep the Google Group only for Windows-specific questions
that do not necessarily involve a bug in our software.

Ciao,
Dscho