[RESOLVED] Git error: object is empty/ fatal: loose object is corrupt

When the local git repository is corrupted, the following message will be thrown by git for all type of git commands.

error: object file .git/objects/34/a933ab83249282f901d07ff29eb5346f1cd6ca is empty

error: object file .git/objects/34/a933ab83249282f901d07ff29eb5346f1cd6ca is empty

fatal: loose object 34a933ab83249282f901d07ff29eb5346f1cd6ca (stored in .git/objects/34/a933ab83249282f901d07ff29eb5346f1cd6ca) is corrupt

This can be appeared after a computer crash/ forceful shutdown or even after a improper shutdown of the development IDE such as jIdea or Eclipse (If git is integrated and used on them).

This can be even non recoverable depending on the damage happened to the Git metadata entries.

Method 1

You can check the status of the object by following command,

$> git fsck --full

broken link from    tree 89b563c6d23595e7cb2a21e5ebbb53655278dff8

           to    blob xx852147

missing blob xx852147

The object with broken link will be listed if any.

Then it is possible to check the file on which the empty object is a hash of.

$> git ls-tree 89b56
...

12264 blob xx852147  <file_name>

Then the hash should be created using the relevant file name

$> git hash-object -w <file_path><file_name>

This will fix the issue by recalculating the hash and updating the Git metadata set.

Method 2

In unrecoverable scenarios any of these won't work, then the basic steps has to be used instead.

• Back up the git folder
• Clone the repository again
• patch the changes from the back up file by file to the fresh copy.

References

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/howto/recover-corrupted-blob-object.txt?id=HEAD