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GIT-FSCK(1)			  Git Manual			   GIT-FSCK(1)

NAME
       git-fsck	- Verifies the connectivity and	validity of the	objects	in the
       database

SYNOPSIS
       git fsck	[--tags] [--root] [--unreachable] [--cache] [--no-reflogs]
		[--[no-]full] [--strict] [--verbose] [--lost-found]
		[--[no-]dangling] [--[no-]progress] [--connectivity-only]
		[--[no-]name-objects] [<object>...]

DESCRIPTION
       Verifies	the connectivity and validity of the objects in	the database.

OPTIONS
       <object>
	   An object to	treat as the head of an	unreachability trace.

	   If no objects are given, git	fsck defaults to using the index file,
	   all SHA-1 references	in the refs namespace, and all reflogs (unless
	   --no-reflogs	is given) as heads.

       --unreachable
	   Print out objects that exist	but that aren't	reachable from any of
	   the reference nodes.

       --[no-]dangling
	   Print objects that exist but	that are never directly	used
	   (default).  --no-dangling can be used to omit this information from
	   the output.

       --root
	   Report root nodes.

       --tags
	   Report tags.

       --cache
	   Consider any	object recorded	in the index also as a head node for
	   an unreachability trace.

       --no-reflogs
	   Do not consider commits that	are referenced only by an entry	in a
	   reflog to be	reachable. This	option is meant	only to	search for
	   commits that	used to	be in a	ref, but now aren't, but are still in
	   that	corresponding reflog.

       --full
	   Check not just objects in GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY ($GIT_DIR/objects),
	   but also the	ones found in alternate	object pools listed in
	   GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES or
	   $GIT_DIR/objects/info/alternates, and in packed Git archives	found
	   in $GIT_DIR/objects/pack and	corresponding pack subdirectories in
	   alternate object pools. This	is now default;	you can	turn it	off
	   with	--no-full.

       --connectivity-only
	   Check only the connectivity of reachable objects, making sure that
	   any objects referenced by a reachable tag, commit, or tree are
	   present. This speeds	up the operation by avoiding reading blobs
	   entirely (though it does still check	that referenced	blobs exist).
	   This	will detect corruption in commits and trees, but not do	any
	   semantic checks (e.g., for format errors). Corruption in blob
	   objects will	not be detected	at all.

	   Unreachable tags, commits, and trees	will also be accessed to find
	   the tips of dangling	segments of history. Use --no-dangling if you
	   don't care about this output	and want to speed it up	further.

       --strict
	   Enable more strict checking,	namely to catch	a file mode recorded
	   with	g+w bit	set, which was created by older	versions of Git.
	   Existing repositories, including the	Linux kernel, Git itself, and
	   sparse repository have old objects that trigger this	check, but it
	   is recommended to check new projects	with this flag.

       --verbose
	   Be chatty.

       --lost-found
	   Write dangling objects into .git/lost-found/commit/ or
	   .git/lost-found/other/, depending on	type. If the object is a blob,
	   the contents	are written into the file, rather than its object
	   name.

       --name-objects
	   When	displaying names of reachable objects, in addition to the
	   SHA-1 also display a	name that describes how	they are reachable,
	   compatible with git-rev-parse(1), e.g.
	   HEAD@{1234567890}~25^2:src/.

       --[no-]progress
	   Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
	   when	it is attached to a terminal, unless --no-progress or
	   --verbose is	specified. --progress forces progress status even if
	   the standard	error stream is	not directed to	a terminal.

CONFIGURATION
       Everything below	this line in this section is selectively included from
       the git-config(1) documentation.	The content is the same	as what's
       found there:

       fsck.<msg-id>
	   During fsck git may find issues with	legacy data which wouldn't be
	   generated by	current	versions of git, and which wouldn't be sent
	   over	the wire if transfer.fsckObjects was set. This feature is
	   intended to support working with legacy repositories	containing
	   such	data.

	   Setting fsck.<msg-id> will be picked	up by git-fsck(1), but to
	   accept pushes of such data set receive.fsck.<msg-id>	instead, or to
	   clone or fetch it set fetch.fsck.<msg-id>.

	   The rest of the documentation discusses fsck.* for brevity, but the
	   same	applies	for the	corresponding receive.fsck.* and fetch.fsck.*.
	   variables.

	   Unlike variables like color.ui and core.editor, the
	   receive.fsck.<msg-id> and fetch.fsck.<msg-id> variables will	not
	   fall	back on	the fsck.<msg-id> configuration	if they	aren't set. To
	   uniformly configure the same	fsck settings in different
	   circumstances, all three of them must be set	to the same values.

	   When	fsck.<msg-id> is set, errors can be switched to	warnings and
	   vice	versa by configuring the fsck.<msg-id> setting where the
	   <msg-id> is the fsck	message	ID and the value is one	of error, warn
	   or ignore. For convenience, fsck prefixes the error/warning with
	   the message ID, e.g.	"missingEmail: invalid author/committer	line -
	   missing email" means	that setting fsck.missingEmail = ignore	will
	   hide	that issue.

	   In general, it is better to enumerate existing objects with
	   problems with fsck.skipList,	instead	of listing the kind of
	   breakages these problematic objects share to	be ignored, as doing
	   the latter will allow new instances of the same breakages go
	   unnoticed.

	   Setting an unknown fsck.<msg-id> value will cause fsck to die, but
	   doing the same for receive.fsck.<msg-id> and	fetch.fsck.<msg-id>
	   will	only cause git to warn.

	   See the Fsck	Messages section of git-fsck(1)	for supported values
	   of <msg-id>.

       fsck.skipList
	   The path to a list of object	names (i.e. one	unabbreviated SHA-1
	   per line) that are known to be broken in a non-fatal	way and	should
	   be ignored. On versions of Git 2.20 and later, comments (#),	empty
	   lines, and any leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.
	   Everything but a SHA-1 per line will	error out on older versions.

	   This	feature	is useful when an established project should be
	   accepted despite early commits containing errors that can be	safely
	   ignored, such as invalid committer email addresses. Note: corrupt
	   objects cannot be skipped with this setting.

	   Like	fsck.<msg-id> this variable has	corresponding
	   receive.fsck.skipList and fetch.fsck.skipList variants.

	   Unlike variables like color.ui and core.editor the
	   receive.fsck.skipList and fetch.fsck.skipList variables will	not
	   fall	back on	the fsck.skipList configuration	if they	aren't set. To
	   uniformly configure the same	fsck settings in different
	   circumstances, all three of them must be set	to the same values.

	   Older versions of Git (before 2.20) documented that the object
	   names list should be	sorted.	This was never a requirement; the
	   object names	could appear in	any order, but when reading the	list
	   we tracked whether the list was sorted for the purposes of an
	   internal binary search implementation, which	could save itself some
	   work	with an	already	sorted list. Unless you	had a humongous	list
	   there was no	reason to go out of your way to	pre-sort the list.
	   After Git version 2.20 a hash implementation	is used	instead, so
	   there's now no reason to pre-sort the list.

DISCUSSION
       git-fsck	tests SHA-1 and	general	object sanity, and it does full
       tracking	of the resulting reachability and everything else. It prints
       out any corruption it finds (missing or bad objects), and if you	use
       the --unreachable flag it will also print out objects that exist	but
       that aren't reachable from any of the specified head nodes (or the
       default set, as mentioned above).

       Any corrupt objects you will have to find in backups or other archives
       (i.e., you can just remove them and do an rsync with some other site in
       the hopes that somebody else has	the object you have corrupted).

       If core.commitGraph is true, the	commit-graph file will also be
       inspected using git commit-graph	verify.	See git-commit-graph(1).

EXTRACTED DIAGNOSTICS
       unreachable <type> <object>
	   The <type> object <object>, isn't actually referred to directly or
	   indirectly in any of	the trees or commits seen. This	can mean that
	   there's another root	node that you're not specifying	or that	the
	   tree	is corrupt. If you haven't missed a root node then you might
	   as well delete unreachable nodes since they can't be	used.

       missing <type> <object>
	   The <type> object <object>, is referred to but isn't	present	in the
	   database.

       dangling	<type> <object>
	   The <type> object <object>, is present in the database but never
	   directly used. A dangling commit could be a root node.

       hash mismatch <object>
	   The database	has an object whose hash doesn't match the object
	   database value. This	indicates a serious data integrity problem.

FSCK MESSAGES
       The following lists the types of	errors git fsck	detects	and what each
       error means, with their default severity. The severity of the error,
       other than those	that are marked	as "(FATAL)", can be tweaked by
       setting the corresponding fsck.<msg-id> configuration variable.

       badDate
	   (ERROR) Invalid date	format in an author/committer line.

       badDateOverflow
	   (ERROR) Invalid date	value in an author/committer line.

       badEmail
	   (ERROR) Invalid email format	in an author/committer line.

       badFilemode
	   (INFO) A tree contains a bad	filemode entry.

       badName
	   (ERROR) An author/committer name is empty.

       badObjectSha1
	   (ERROR) An object has a bad sha1.

       badParentSha1
	   (ERROR) A commit object has a bad parent sha1.

       badRefContent
	   (ERROR) A ref has bad content.

       badRefFiletype
	   (ERROR) A ref has a bad file	type.

       badRefName
	   (ERROR) A ref has an	invalid	format.

       badReferentName
	   (ERROR) The referent	name of	a symref is invalid.

       badTagName
	   (INFO) A tag	has an invalid format.

       badTimezone
	   (ERROR) Found an invalid time zone in an author/committer line.

       badTree
	   (ERROR) A tree cannot be parsed.

       badTreeSha1
	   (ERROR) A tree has an invalid format.

       badType
	   (ERROR) Found an invalid object type.

       duplicateEntries
	   (ERROR) A tree contains duplicate file entries.

       emptyName
	   (WARN) A path contains an empty name.

       extraHeaderEntry
	   (IGNORE) Extra headers found	after tagger.

       fullPathname
	   (WARN) A path contains the full path	starting with "/".

       gitattributesBlob
	   (ERROR) A non-blob found at .gitattributes.

       gitattributesLarge
	   (ERROR) The .gitattributes blob is too large.

       gitattributesLineLength
	   (ERROR) The .gitattributes blob contains too	long lines.

       gitattributesMissing
	   (ERROR) Unable to read .gitattributes blob.

       gitattributesSymlink
	   (INFO) .gitattributes is a symlink.

       gitignoreSymlink
	   (INFO) .gitignore is	a symlink.

       gitmodulesBlob
	   (ERROR) A non-blob found at .gitmodules.

       gitmodulesLarge
	   (ERROR) The .gitmodules file	is too large to	parse.

       gitmodulesMissing
	   (ERROR) Unable to read .gitmodules blob.

       gitmodulesName
	   (ERROR) A submodule name is invalid.

       gitmodulesParse
	   (INFO) Could	not parse .gitmodules blob.

       gitmodulesLarge;	(ERROR)	.gitmodules blob is too	large to parse.

       gitmodulesPath
	   (ERROR) .gitmodules path is invalid.

       gitmodulesSymlink
	   (ERROR) .gitmodules is a symlink.

       gitmodulesUpdate
	   (ERROR) Found an invalid submodule update setting.

       gitmodulesUrl
	   (ERROR) Found an invalid submodule url.

       hasDot
	   (WARN) A tree contains an entry named ..

       hasDotdot
	   (WARN) A tree contains an entry named ...

       hasDotgit
	   (WARN) A tree contains an entry named .git.

       largePathname
	   (WARN) A tree contains an entry with	a very long path name. If the
	   value of fsck.largePathname contains	a colon, that value is used as
	   the maximum allowable length	(e.g., "warn:10" would complain	about
	   any path component of 11 or more bytes). The	default	value is 4096.

       mailmapSymlink
	   (INFO) .mailmap is a	symlink.

       missingAuthor
	   (ERROR) Author is missing.

       missingCommitter
	   (ERROR) Committer is	missing.

       missingEmail
	   (ERROR) Email is missing in an author/committer line.

       missingNameBeforeEmail
	   (ERROR) Missing name	before an email	in an author/committer line.

       missingObject
	   (ERROR) Missing object line in tag object.

       missingSpaceBeforeDate
	   (ERROR) Missing space before	date in	an author/committer line.

       missingSpaceBeforeEmail
	   (ERROR) Missing space before	the email in an	author/committer line.

       missingTag
	   (ERROR) Unexpected end after	type line in a tag object.

       missingTagEntry
	   (ERROR) Missing tag line in a tag object.

       missingTaggerEntry
	   (INFO) Missing tagger line in a tag object.

       missingTree
	   (ERROR) Missing tree	line in	a commit object.

       missingType
	   (ERROR) Invalid type	value on the type line in a tag	object.

       missingTypeEntry
	   (ERROR) Missing type	line in	a tag object.

       multipleAuthors
	   (ERROR) Multiple author lines found in a commit.

       nulInCommit
	   (WARN) Found	a NUL byte in the commit object	body.

       nulInHeader
	   (FATAL) NUL byte exists in the object header.

       nullSha1
	   (WARN) Tree contains	entries	pointing to a null sha1.

       refMissingNewline
	   (INFO) A loose ref that does	not end	with newline(LF). As valid
	   implementations of Git never	created	such a loose ref file, it may
	   become an error in the future. Report to the	git@vger.kernel.org[1]
	   mailing list	if you see this	error, as we need to know what tools
	   created such	a file.

       symlinkRef
	   (INFO) A symbolic link is used as a symref. Report to the
	   git@vger.kernel.org[1] mailing list if you see this error, as we
	   are assessing the feasibility of dropping the support to drop
	   creating symbolic links as symrefs.

       symrefTargetIsNotARef
	   (INFO) The target of	a symbolic reference points neither to a root
	   reference nor to a reference	starting with "refs/". Although	we
	   allow create	a symref pointing to the referent which	is outside the
	   "ref" by using git symbolic-ref, we may tighten the rule in the
	   future. Report to the git@vger.kernel.org[1]	mailing	list if	you
	   see this error, as we need to know what tools created such a	file.

       trailingRefContent
	   (INFO) A loose ref has trailing content. As valid implementations
	   of Git never	created	such a loose ref file, it may become an	error
	   in the future. Report to the	git@vger.kernel.org[1] mailing list if
	   you see this	error, as we need to know what tools created such a
	   file.

       treeNotSorted
	   (ERROR) A tree is not properly sorted.

       unknownType
	   (ERROR) Found an unknown object type.

       unterminatedHeader
	   (FATAL) Missing end-of-line in the object header.

       zeroPaddedDate
	   (ERROR) Found a zero	padded date in an author/committer line.

       zeroPaddedFilemode
	   (WARN) Found	a zero padded filemode in a tree.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY
	   used	to specify the object database root (usually $GIT_DIR/objects)

       GIT_INDEX_FILE
	   used	to specify the index file of the index

       GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES
	   used	to specify additional object database roots (usually unset)

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES
	1. git@vger.kernel.org
	   mailto:git@vger.kernel.org

Git 2.49.0			  2025-03-14			   GIT-FSCK(1)

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