---
title: How to fix `rm -f .git/index`
teaser:
tags: git
author: Gabe Berke-Williams
published_on: 2011-08-04
---

Ever gotten this message?

    fatal: Unable to create '/path/to/repo/.git/index.lock': File exists.

    If no other git process is currently running, this probably means a
    git process crashed in this repository earlier. Make sure no other git
    process is running and remove the file manually to continue.

The way to fix this:

    rm .git/index.lock

If you instead do this (note the lack of ".lock" at the end):

    rm .git/index

then your git repo will behave in very weird ways. For instance, `git
status` won't work, and other things break in odd ways. Here's the
fix:

    git read-tree --reset HEAD

You'll lose unstaged changes, but you'll have your repo back.