fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository

Question

I've a repository moodle on my Github account which I forked from the official repository.

I then cloned it on my local machine. It worked fine. I created several branches (under the master branch). I made several commits and it worked fine.

I don't know how I'm getting the following error when I do : git push origin master

fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

How do I resolve the error without effecting my repository on Github?

I'm using Ubuntu 12.10

The contents of my .git/config after doing cat $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.git/config gives:

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
[branch "master"]
[branch "MOODLE_23_STABLE"]
[branch "MOODLE_24_STABLE"]
[remote "upstream"]
    url = git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/upstream/*

The folder where you cloned on local machine should contain .git folder. — pmod, Mar 26 '13 at 12:59

score 156 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

156

$HOME/.gitconfig is your global config for git.
There are three levels of config files.

 cat $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.git/config

(mentioned by bereal) is your local config, local to the repo you have cloned.

you can also type from within your repo:

git remote -v

And see if there is any remote named 'origin' listed in it.

If not, if that remote (which is created by default when cloning a repo) is missing, you can add it again:

git remote add origin url/to/your/fork

The OP mentions:

Doing git remote -v gives:

upstream git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git (fetch) 
upstream git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git (push)

So 'origin' is missing: the reference to your fork.
See "What is the difference between origin and upstream in github"

enter image description here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Community

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answered Mar 26 '13 at 13:13

VonC

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Doing `git remote -v` gives: `upstream git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git (fetch)` `upstream git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git (push)` – xan Mar 26 '13 at 13:14
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@xan 'upstream" is the repo you have forked. You are missing origin, which is your fork on github. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/15632224/6309 and http://stackoverflow.com/a/9257901/6309 – VonC Mar 26 '13 at 13:15
How do I change my fork to master? – Wolfpack'08 Jan 25 '20 at 10:16
@Wolfpack'08 "fork" means a repository (with multiple branch). Change to a branch is a local operation which involves git switch: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57066202/6309. In your own words, what does "changing a fork to master" means to you? Changing your local branch in your local cloned repository (of your remote GitHub fork)? – VonC Jan 25 '20 at 10:53
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If you own the remote repo ghy, simply push to it: `git push -u ghy master`. – VonC Jan 25 '20 at 11:23
Thanks. I figured out various mistakes I'd made and how I was picturing git incorrectly. I made some naming errors, was avoiding clone, and did some other dumb stuff. – Wolfpack'08 Jan 25 '20 at 12:34

score 30 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 17 '17 at 06:26

30

I faced the same problem when I renamed my repository on GitHub. I tried to push at which point I got the error

fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

I had to change the URL using

git remote set-url origin ssh://git@github.com/username/newRepoName.git

After this all commands started working fine. You can check the change by using

git remote -v

In my case after successfull change it showed correct renamed repo in URL

[aniket@alok Android]$ git remote -v
origin  ssh://git@github.com/aniket91/TicTacToe.git (fetch)
origin  ssh://git@github.com/aniket91/TicTacToe.git (push)

edited Jan 17 '17 at 06:26

javabrett

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answered Nov 11 '13 at 14:21

Aniket Thakur

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"fatal: no such remote 'origin'" – MwBakker Jan 02 '21 at 19:38
@MwBakker first you have to add origin with "git remote add origin ssh://git@github.com/username/newRepoName.git" and then you can check it with "git remote -v". – buck80 Jan 23 '22 at 08:02

score 18 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 21 '16 at 11:46

It is possible the other branch you try to pull from is out of synch; so before adding and removing remote try to (if you are trying to pull from master)

git pull origin master

for me that simple call solved those error messages:

fatal: 'master' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 17 '20 at 13:20

6

Try to create remote origin first, maybe is missing because you change name of the remote repo

git remote add origin URL_TO_YOUR_REPO

answered Mar 17 '20 at 13:20

zdravko zdravkin

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score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 02 '21 at 11:06

6

I had the same issue and solved it by checking

git remote -v

git init the repo URL

git remote add origin the repo URL

git push -f origin master

edited Jun 02 '21 at 11:06

Vega

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answered Jun 02 '21 at 09:10

Lucy karimi

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What is new in this answer? `git remote add` is mentioned above... – Christoph Jun 02 '21 at 11:11

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered May 15 '14 at 16:30

This does not answer your question, but I faced a similar error message but due to a different reason. Allow me to make my post for the sake of information collection.

I have a git repo on a network drive. Let's call this network drive RAID. I cloned this repo on my local machine (LOCAL) and on my number crunching cluster (CRUNCHER). For convenience I mounted the user directory of my account on CRUNCHER on my local machine. So, I can manipulate files on CRUNCHER without the need to do the work in an SSH terminal.

Today, I was modifying files in the repo on CRUNCHER via my local machine. At some point I decided to commit the files, so a did a commit. Adding the modified files and doing the commit worked as I expected, but when I called git push I got an error message similar to the one posted in the question.

The reason was, that I called push from within the repo on CRUNCHER on LOCAL. So, all paths in the config file were plain wrong.

When I realized my fault, I logged onto CRUNCHER via Terminal and was able to push the commit.

Feel free to comment if my explanation can't be understood, or you find my post superfluous.

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 21 '21 at 05:58

100% works.

First of first make sure that there is no hidden git folder inside your project root and delete it if there is one. Then open a command shell and execute the following commands:

git init -b main

git add .   //This is very important and it adds the files in the local repository and stages them for commit.

git commit -m "First commit"

git remote add origin  <REMOTE_URL>  //REMOTE_URL: the repository address in github.com 

git remote -v  //Verifies the new remote URL

git push origin main

and that's it. You can also read more about this in GitHub documentation

Fred · Answer 8 · 2022-06-14T16:53:35.677

My issue was related to the way I cloned the repo. Github gave a colon before the user name, for example:

git@github.companyname.com:usernmame/reponame.git

The command git remote -v showed this:

origin git@github.companyname.com:usernmame/reponame.git (fetch)
origin git@github.companyname.com:usernmame/reponame.git (push)

Everything matched what Github was telling me, so I was confused why I was getting following error when I tried to push a new branch upstream:

fatal: 'reponame' does not appear to be a git repository

Then I realized it was because my origin was pointing to the wrong upstream because of the colon in the URL

git remote set-url origin ssh://git@github.companyname.com/username/reponame.git

Now I can push the new branch.

Update

I have found that after doing this I was no longer able to push any changes. I had to reset the origin back to the URL with the colon in order pushes to work.

git remote set-url origin git@github.companyname.com:usernmame/reponame.git

So I would say that this is a work around and not a proper solution.

Waqleh · Answer 9 · 2016-03-16T16:18:35.233

1

I had the same error on git pull origin branchname when setting the remote origin as path fs and not ssh in .git/config:

fatal: '/path/to/repo.git' does not appear to be a git repository 
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

It was like so (this only works for users on same server of git that have access to git):

url = file:///path/to/repo.git/

Fixed it like so (this works on all users that have access to git user (ssh authorizes_keys or password)):

url = git@domain.com:path/to/repo.git

the reason I had it as a directory path was because the git files are on the same server.

edited Mar 16 '16 at 16:18

answered Mar 16 '16 at 16:13

Waqleh

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Indeed! The `/` after domain has to be `:` if using SSH. Simply verify with `git remote -v`. – Noam Manos Jul 30 '19 at 13:48

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 08 '23 at 07:44

0

I had the same error and solved it by editing .git/config in my repo to include:

[branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master

at the end of the file.

answered Feb 08 '23 at 07:44

Ciryon

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score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Apr 19 '23 at 14:36

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For me it was a RAM issue in the WSL. I had to restart WSL to make it work again. In the command prompt:

wsl --shutdown

answered Apr 19 '23 at 14:36

Alin Pop

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 08 '23 at 14:45

0

in my case I had a typo when running 'git remote add origin ...'

answered Aug 08 '23 at 14:45

Hamid Mohamadi

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fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository

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