git status 128: index file open failed. Permission denied

[mirko77]

Why am I having this problem?

I cloned a repository from BitBucket, did my changes and now when I try to commit I get this error. I am on a Windows 7 machine, I am the admin and I have full control on the files I am trying to commit.

Any suggestion?

[stevestreeting · Accepted solution]

I've seen this problem intermittently (but rarely) and it's down to another Windows process locking files when it shouldn't. Windows isn't great at releasing file locks sometimes, and especially things that hook into Explorer can hold file locks well beyond their time (I sometimes can't save files from a text editor because TortoiseGit has locked a file).

If this doesn't go away on its own, I would use Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) to track down what's locking the file. You can search for file handles in Process Explorer using Ctrl-F and then either close or manually kill the process that is locking the file.