git pull displays "fatal: Couldn't find remote ref refs/heads/xxxx" and hangs up

user_584552 0
Viewed 218377

I created a branch called '6796', then I pushed it to remote, checked it out on another machine, made other edits, pushed it, then merged it with the master, and deleted it - locally and remotely (git push :6796) - on the other machine. Now, when I run git pull:

fatal: Couldn't find remote ref refs/heads/6796
user@host:~/path/to/repo$ fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

but git pull origin master works normally. It seems to me that there is some 6796 reference hang up... how to resolve this?

git
10 Answers

In my case, it was the "Lightweight checkout" checkbox that was checked by default, while, as it happens, I needed it unchecked. Can you spot it?

enter image description here

I didn't investigate why did it cause such an abrupt error, but since it blocked my Jenkins jobs for a couple of hours, I felt it's worth sharing on top of the other answers here.

user_9785020

To pull a remote branch locally, I do the following:

git checkout -b branchname // creates a local branch with the same name and checks out on it

git pull origin branchname // pulls the remote one onto your local one

The only time I did this and it didn't work, I deleted the repo, cloned it again and repeated the above 2 steps; it worked.

user_86508970

I have same error. Problem was that branch was deleted, released. But in PhpStorm I still could see it in remote branches. I could checkout as local branch. And then doing git pull was giving this error.

So need to check if this brnach really exists remotely.

user_67376700

I had the same issue. But in my case it was due to my branch's name. The branch's name automatically set in my GitHub repo as main instead of master.

git pull origin master

(did not work).

I confirmed in GitHub if the name of the branch was actually master and found the the actual name was main. so the commands below worked for me.

git pull origin main
user_148051380

In my case, it happenned for the master branch. Later found that my access to the project was accidentally revoked by the project manager. To cross-check, I visited the review site and couldn't see any commits of the said branch and others for that project.

user_7555900
Related