mjhjmtu

This problem is getting weirder.

My original post follows, but here is the new thing I discovered:

I executed

git push

and it gave me its usual error:

Counting objects: 9, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 588 bytes, done.
Total 5 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: unable to create temporary file: No such file or directory
remote: fatal: failed to write object
error: unpack failed: unpack-objects abnormal exit
To USER@REMOTE:/git/PROJECT.git
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (unpacker error)
error: failed to push some refs to 'USER@REMOTE:/git/PROJECT.git'

So being overly optimistic, I thought maybe the "--verbose" option would give me some details, so I immediately tried again:

git push --verbose

and this time it worked:

Pushing to USER@REMOTE:/git/PROJECT.git
Counting objects: 9, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 588 bytes, done.
Total 5 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
To USER@REMOTE:/git/PROJECT.git
 87d6996..1cae8b3 master -> master
updating local tracking ref 'refs/remotes/origin/master'

so it's just totally flaky. I'm starting to suspect that git just doesn't like LDAP.

Original post:

We're transitioning from cvs to git, and I have a test setup where I have a git server that authenticates users with LDAP, let's call it REMOTE, and then my personal machine, let's call it LOCAL. Both machines are Macs. All employees of the company (including me) are members of a group I'll cleverly call GROUP.

I ssh'd to REMOTE as me and created a git repository there in a folder named /git/PROJECT.git using cvs2git.

Then, back on LOCAL, I did:

git clone USER@REMOTE:/git/PROJECT.git

which was fine. On my Mac ("LOCAL") I then edited a few files, deleted a couple, and did

git -a FILES
git rm FILES
git commit -m 'COMMENT'

and life was good.

Then (still on LOCAL) I executed:

git push

to push my changes from LOCAL back to REMOTE and got this:

Counting objects: 19, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Writing objects: 100% (10/10), 1.46 KiB, done.
Total 10 (delta 8), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: unable to create temporary file: No such file or directory
remote: fatal: failed to write object
error: unpack failed: unpack-objects abnormal exit
To USER@git-server-co.local:/git/PROJECT.git
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (unpacker error)
error: failed to push some refs to 'USER@git-server-co.local:/git/PROJECT.git'

I researched this problem and it sounded like it might be that might $TMPDIR is wrong, so I ssh'ed to REMOTE, created a directory named /git/tmp, made sure it had write permissions, edited my .bashrc, and set $TMPDIR to /git/tmp.

Back on LOCAL, if I execute

ssh USER@REMOTE echo $TMPDIR

I correctly see the response

/git/tmp

If I ssh to REMOTE and check file permissions, here's what I see:

ls -l /git
drwxrwxrwx USER GROUP tmp
drwxrwsr-x USER GROUP PROJECT.git

ls -l /git/PROJECT.git

all files are rw for owner (me) and group

What else could be causing this error?

p.s. As is the standard on Macs, if I execute:

ssh ADMIN@REMOTE
cd /
ls -l

I see symbolic links: tmp -> /private/tmp, var -> /private/var, and etc -> /private/etc. I adjusted the permissions and ownership so now they are set to:

lrwxr-xr-x USER GROUP etc -> /private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x USER GROUP tmp -> /private/tmp
lrwxr-xr-x USER GROUP var -> /private/var

I also updated the permissions of the actual folders, so if I execute:

cd /private
ls -al

I see:

drwxr-xr-x USER GROUP etc
drwxrwxrwt USER GROUP tmp
drwxr-xr-x USER GROUP var

And finally, if I :

cd /private/var
ls -al

I see:

drwxrwxrwt USER GROUP tmp

First, I would check why you've got the "error: unable to create temporary file: No such file or directory" at the first attempt.
What was the initial $TMPDIR?
Was it different from /tmp or /var/tmp?
Could you check permissions for these two directories?
Have you considered adding "-v" to git's commands, to see the details?
If you really would like to use different TMPDIR, consider adding this variable to some other "dot file", like .profile.

I also got this error: error: unable to create temporary file: Not a directory.
while adding a file. (git add filename.ext)

I checked in .git folder and found a suspicious file e4(maybe corrupted). e4 should be a directory but it wasn't. So, I removed the file (named e4 in my case) from .git/objects/

rm -rf .git/objects/e4

Then error didn't happen again.