Several different operations take too long, sometimes end up crashing.

[DanielRosenwasser]

git version 2.6.1.windows.1
Windows 10 Enterprise Build 10569 (Insider Preview)

Certain operations are taking absurdly long (running with an SSD, freshly cloned repo). Then, sometimes the operation ends up crashing the program

> git diff
      0 [main] less 5660 C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\less.exe: *** fatal error - add_item ("\??\C:\Program Files\Git", "/", ...) failed, errno 1
Stack trace:
Frame        Function    Args
000005FAAE0  0018007208E (00180264C9A, 00180215E59, 00600010000, 000005F8A30)
000005FAAE0  00180046DF2 (000005F9A98, 000005FAAE0, 1D109FC80AE1BA9, 00000000000)
000005FAAE0  00180046E32 (000005F9AB0, 00000000001, 00600010000, 505C3A435C3F3F5C)
000005FAAE0  001800DE09D (00000000000, 000005FCE00, 001800CE718, 1D109FC89A028F7)
000005FCB00  00180127D25 (00000000000, 00300000020, 00000000000, 00300000002)
000005FCBC0  00180047425 (000005FCCA0, 000005FCCA0, 000005FCCA0, 00000000002)
00000000000  0018004602C (00000000000, 000005FCF80, 7FFE76306002, 000C0150008)
00000000000  001800460C4 (00000080088, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
00000000000  00100414FC1 (00000000000, 00000000000, 0007E110000, 00000000000)
00000000000  00100401010 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00100401000)
00000000000  7FFE754F2F42 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
00000000000  7FFE762D5784 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
End of stack trace

Then again

> git push -u origin updateContributingMd
      1 [main] sh 6860 C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\sh.exe: *** fatal error - add_item ("\??\C:\Program Files\Git", "/", ...) failed, errno 1
Stack trace:
Frame        Function    Args
000005FAAE0  0018007208E (00180264C9A, 00180215E59, 00600010000, 000005F8A30)
000005FAAE0  00180046DF2 (000005F9A98, 000005FAAE0, 1D109FDB95D207C, 00000000000)
000005FAAE0  00180046E32 (000005F9AB0, 00000000001, 00600010000, 505C3A435C3F3F5C)
000005FAAE0  001800DE09D (00000000000, 000005FCE00, 001800CE718, 1D109FDC2502B8F)
000005FCB00  00180127D25 (00000000000, 00300000020, 00000000000, 00300000002)
000005FCBC0  00180047425 (000005FCCA0, 000005FCCA0, 000005FCCA0, 00000000002)
00000000000  0018004602C (00000000000, 000005FCF80, 7FFE76306002, 000C0150008)
00000000000  001800460C4 (00000080088, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
00000000000  001004D24B1 (00000000000, 00000000000, 0007E110000, 00000000000)
00000000000  00100401010 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00100401000)
00000000000  7FFE754F2F42 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
00000000000  7FFE762D5784 (00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000, 00000000000)
End of stack trace

[DanielRosenwasser]

I actually cannot open Git Bash at all.

[dscho]

I am using Git for Windows without problems on Windows 10 Enterprise (10.0.10240). Comparing my experience with your account leads me to conclude that your setup has at least one quirk that mine lacks.

This conclusion in turn leads me to the observation that this bug report hides all details about the setup except the Windows version. It does not even mention whether this is a 32-bit or a 64-bit Windows. Please do not do that. It makes it hard for others to help you, even if they want. To help you come up with the necessary information, I encourage you to follow the advice given in https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/wiki/Issue-reporting-guidelines to provide enough detail.

[dscho]

Well, the closest I can do to help without more details as to the setup is to refer you to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28861237/bash-is-crashing-on-cygwin-add-item-c-cygwin and wish you the best of luck 😺

[DanielRosenwasser]

Hey @dscho sorry about that. I didn't mean to dump an error and leave you with that. Totally not my intention. I wasn't familiar with the error reporting guidelines, so I'm glad you pointed them out.

I'm running on a 64-bit version of Windows if that helps at all.

Something I found on the bus today is that when not connected to a network, I don't observe the same issues at all. When I'm connected directly into my office network, I don't observe the issue either. This was all seen on my home network.

Could it be an issue related to being on a domain-joined computer? My machine uses my office's domain, and I remember having certain issues with Cygwin related to that.

[dscho]

Something I found on the bus today is that when not connected to a network, I don't observe the same issues at all. When I'm connected directly into my office network, I don't observe the issue either. This was all seen on my home network.

Interesting... So is your domain controller simply not reachable in that case?

[DanielRosenwasser]

That appears to be the issue, yes. Git should ideally be resilient to this though, right?

[DanielRosenwasser]

This is indeed amended by the suggested fix on the Cygwin website. For anyone searching for a solution, I've summed up the steps below in case anyone else is running into excruciatingly slow startups/crashes in Cygwin and/or Git for Windows.

Still, I feel like the tools shouldn't crash in this situation. At the very least, users need to have the getent binary in case they run into something like this.

To clarify how I got around this

1. Install Cygwin

2. From a Cygwin Bash prompt, type in the following

   getent passwd $(id -u) > /etc/passwd
   getent group $(id -G) > /etc/group

3. Assuming that your Cygwin installation was C:\cygwin\ and that your Git for Windows installation is at C:\Program Files\Git\:

   1. Open Windows Explorer or an elevated PowerShell window.
   2. Copy C:\cygwin\etc\passwd to C:\Program Files\Git\etc\passwd
   3. Copy C:\cygwin\etc\group to C:\Program Files\Git\etc\group

[dscho]

Please note that this solution works correctly only if you are working on a single-user machine.

What does your /etc/nsswitch.conf show? It should contain these lines:

# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd: files db
group: files # db

db_enum: cache builtin

db_home: env windows cygwin desc
db_shell: env windows # cygwin desc
db_gecos: env # cygwin desc

# End /etc/nsswitch.conf

I worked quite long days just to fix this vexing issue. It is a bummer that it crops up again. But still, we should fix it so it also works on multi-user machines.

[kostix]

@DanielRosenwasser, see #193

[dscho]

What does your /etc/nsswitch.conf show?

@DanielRosenwasser I am still waiting for an answer.

[DanielRosenwasser]

Sorry about that - currently it shows

# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd: files db
group: files # db

db_enum: cache builtin

db_home: env windows cygwin desc
db_shell: env windows # cygwin desc
db_gecos: env # windows cygwin desc

# End /etc/nsswitch.conf

[DanielRosenwasser]

So Cygwin itself was running into this problem again on my computer. Running the program which took an absurd amount of time. I was able to remedy it by changing Cygwin's nsswitch.conf from

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
#    This file is read once by the first process in a Cygwin process tree.
#    To pick up changes, restart all Cygwin processes.  For a description
#    see https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html#ntsec-mapping-nsswitch
#
# Defaults:
# passwd:   files db
# group:    files db
# db_enum:  cache builtin
# db_home:  /home/%U
# db_shell: /bin/bash
# db_gecos: <empty>

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
#    This file is read once by the first process in a Cygwin process tree.
#    To pick up changes, restart all Cygwin processes.  For a description
#    see https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html#ntsec-mapping-nsswitch
#
# Defaults:
# passwd:   files db
 group:    files # db
# db_enum:  cache builtin
# db_home:  /home/%U
# db_shell: /bin/bash
# db_gecos: <empty>

Sorry if this is useless information to you. Let me know if there's anything I can further diagnose to help you.

[dscho]

So you set the group in Cygwin as it is in Git for Windows and that fixed it in Cygwin, but not in Git for Windows? Sorry, things are still unclear to me.