Git rename from index.lock to index failed

Question

Using the GitHub Windows client I did a sync to pull remote changes to my local machine, but before finishing the sync, I ran out of disk space and the sync failed.

Answer 1

This is caused when antivirus or OS defender (for example Windows Defender) is running. The solution: turn off antivirus for several minutes make your add, commit and push. Turn on antivirus.
It will work.

Answer 2

I got this error several times in a row when running git reset HEAD in a project stored in a Google Drive folder, but after a few minutes the problem went away.

Answer 3

Looks like the following process had a lock on the .git\index file:

ssh-agent.exe
C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\GitHub\PortableGit_8810fd5c2c79c73adcc73fd0825f3b32fdb816e7\bin\ssh-agent.exe

I killed the process and ran git reset HEAD and looks like I'm back to normal now.

Answer 4

To discard local changes, go

git reset HEAD

Then checkout your old commit, delete the new one, and pull again.

git checkout "hashOld"
git branch -d "hashNew"
git pull

Answer 5

In my case, this was caused by using the same Git repo from both admin and non-admin command prompts. When last git pull was from admin cmd, the index was created by it, and then non-admin cmd had insufficient permissions to modify it.

My solution was re-creating the index (while keeping the worktree intact):

del .git\index
git reset --mixed head

Answer 6

In my case I had to close the VS code which I opened with code . from a WSL Ubuntu terminal.