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Troubleshooting Git

Sometimes things don't work the way they should or as you might expect when you're using Git. Here are some tips on troubleshooting and resolving issues with Git.

Broken pipe errors on git push

'Broken pipe' errors can occur when attempting to push to a remote repository. When pushing you will usually see:

Write failed: Broken pipe
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

To fix this issue, here are some possible solutions.

Increase the POST buffer size in Git

If pushing over HTTP, you can try increasing the POST buffer size in Git's configuration. Open a terminal and enter:

git config http.postBuffer 52428800

The value is specified in bytes, so in the above case the buffer size has been set to 50MB. The default is 1MB.

Check your SSH configuration

If pushing over SSH, first check your SSH configuration as 'Broken pipe' errors can sometimes be caused by underlying issues with SSH (such as authentication). Make sure that SSH is correctly configured by following the instructions in the SSH troubleshooting docs.

There's another option where you can prevent session timeouts by configuring SSH 'keep alive' either on the client or on the server (if you are a GitLab admin and have access to the server).

NOTE: Note: configuring both the client and the server is unnecessary.

To configure SSH on the client side:

  • On UNIX, edit ~/.ssh/config (create the file if it doesn’t exist) and add or edit:

    Host your-gitlab-instance-url.com
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  ServerAliveCountMax 5

  • On Windows, if you are using PuTTY, go to your session properties, then navigate to "Connection" and under "Sending of null packets to keep session active", set "Seconds between keepalives (0 to turn off)" to 60.

To configure SSH on the server side, edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add:

ClientAliveInterval 60
ClientAliveCountMax 5

Running a git repack

If 'pack-objects' type errors are also being displayed, you can try to run a git repack before attempting to push to the remote repository again:

git repack
git push

Upgrade your Git client

In case you're running an older version of Git (< 2.9), consider upgrading to >= 2.9 (see Broken pipe when pushing to Git repository).