fatal: Unable to create temporary file '/home/username/git/myrepo.git/./objects/pack/tmp_pack_XXXXXX': Permission denied

Question

I have been having trouble with this error message and I don\'t understand the proper solution to fix it or go about debugging it. I have googled the error in various forms

Answer 1

I resolved it by giving permission to the user on each of the directories that you're using, like so:

sudo chown user /home/user/git

and so on.

Answer 2

Ok, I figured it out. The issue was that I didn't have the correct permissions set for myrepo.git and the parent directory git.

As root I logged into the server and used:

$ chown username /home/username/git

This then returns drwxrwxr-x 4 username root 4096 2012-10-30 15:51 /home/username/git with the following:

$ ls -ld /home/username/git

I then make a new directory for myrepo.git inside git:

$ mkdir myrepo.git
$ ls -ld myrepo.git/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-10-30 18:41 myrepo.git/

but it has the user set to root, so I change it to username the same way as before.

$ chown username myrepo.git/
$ ls -ld myrepo.git/
drwxr-xr-x 2 username root 4096 2012-10-30 18:41 myrepo.git/

I then sign out of root and sign into server as username:

Inside git directory:

$ cd myrepo.git/
$ git --bare init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/username/git/myrepo.git/

On local machine:

$ git remote add origin      
ssh://username@server.com/home/username/git/myrepo.git
$ git push origin master

SUCCESS!

Hopefully this comes in handy for anyone else that runs into the same issue in the future!

Resources

• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/unix-or-linux-commands-for-changing-user-rights.html
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-use-chmod-and-chown-command/