What does the git error message "Server does not allow request for unadvertised object" mean?

Question

I am trying to do a checkout from github, and I got this error message:

[user@arch ~]$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/simsong/tcpflow.git
Cloning into 'tcpflow'...
The authenticity of host 'github.com (192.30.253.113)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:nThbg6kXUpJWGl7E1IGOCspRomTxdCARLviKw6E5SY8.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com,192.30.253.113' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
remote: Counting objects: 4190, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (32/32), done.
remote: Total 4190 (delta 21), reused 29 (delta 12), pack-reused 4146
Receiving objects: 100% (4190/4190), 50.27 MiB | 2.21 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2954/2954), done.
Submodule 'src/be13_api' (https://github.com/simsong/be13_api.git) registered for path 'src/be13_api'
Submodule 'src/dfxml' (https://github.com/simsong/dfxml.git) registered for path 'src/dfxml'
Submodule 'src/http-parser' (https://github.com/nodejs/http-parser.git) registered for path 'src/http-parser'
Cloning into '/home/user/tcpflow/src/be13_api'...
remote: Counting objects: 1203, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.
remote: Total 1203 (delta 2), reused 5 (delta 1), pack-reused 1194
Receiving objects: 100% (1203/1203), 477.47 KiB | 1.96 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (821/821), done.
Cloning into '/home/user/tcpflow/src/dfxml'...
remote: Counting objects: 1929, done.
remote: Total 1929 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 1929
Receiving objects: 100% (1929/1929), 572.09 KiB | 2.89 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1294/1294), done.
Cloning into '/home/user/tcpflow/src/http-parser'...
remote: Counting objects: 1487, done.
remote: Total 1487 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 1487
Receiving objects: 100% (1487/1487), 667.24 KiB | 2.46 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (916/916), done.
Submodule path 'src/be13_api': checked out 'c81521d768bb78499c069fcd7c47adc8eee0350c'
Submodule path 'src/dfxml': checked out 'c31224626cf5f6678d42cbcfbfcd4e6191c9a864'
error: Server does not allow request for unadvertised object 5bbcdc5df9d01b521e8da011bab0da70bdec3653
Fetched in submodule path 'src/http-parser', but it did not contain 5bbcdc5df9d01b521e8da011bab0da70bdec3653. Direct fetching of that commit failed.
[user@arch ~]$

So I'm the maintainer of these repos. The src/http-parser is a fork of another repo, and the maintainers of that repo have consistently not accepted my pull requests (with no reasons given) to add a few auto-generated files to the .gitignore file. But I don't think that's the issue here.

Answer 1

jgit - What is git's advertised refs? - Stack Overflow:

During a fetch, the server can list references that it has and that the client may wish to fetch. These are the advertised references.

• It looks like you cannot directly get any single specific commit from the server, only refs (i.e. branches and tags). Or rather, that Github servers are configured to disallow such requests.

• So, if you want to get a specific commit with --depth, it must be at most <depth>-1 commits away from the fetched ref (which is the branch/tag specified in the submodule's metadata)

  _{Typically, folks advise to just set depth to some number reasonably large but still much smaller than the total number of commit in the repo -- like 50 or 100. E.g. 50 is what Travis uses when doing the initial clone for the project.}

If you aren't updating the submodule with --depth, failing to find the commit would mean any of:

• the submodule's tree is in "shallow" state and the above applies (only possible when it was previously updated with --depth or its entry in .gitmodules has shallow = true)
• the commit is not on the branch that the submodule is using
• the commit is not in the submodule's repo at all:
  • either someone made a mistake,
  • or it was once there but was deleted by a forced push

---

For the record, in your specific case, it was the last case: commit 5bbcdc5df9d01b521e8da011bab0da70bdec3653 is not in the https://github.com/simsong/http-parser.git repo at all.

Answer 2

One way to get access to an unadvertized object is to sync. Then a submodule update should work, like:

git submodule sync --recursive
git submodule update

Answer 3

This can happen when you are pointing to submodule commit that has been removed through a history re-write or squash. The best you can do is:

• First get a clear picture of what your team has been doing so you know what it should look like.
• Update your local with a git pull and then find the closest commit that works with your branch (it may be the latest) and then add that to your parent repo. e.g. something like:

parent-repo$ git fetch
parent-repo$ cd submodule-a
submodule-a$ git pull
submodule-a$ git checkout best-commit-according-to-team-and-your-branch
submodule-a$ cd ../
parent-repo$ git status
...
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
  (commit or discard the untracked or modified content in submodules)
        modified:  submodule-a (modified content)
...
git add submodule-a
git commit -m "updated submodule-a reference"

Once you are happy it is correct and your team agrees you can push it up and the error should go away.

Answer 4

When I run:

git submodule update

or

git submodule update --init --recursive

I got the error:

error: Server does not allow request for unadvertised object xxxxxxxxx

Fetched in submodule path 'xxx', but it did not contain xxxxxxxxx.Direct fetching of that commit failed.

And I fixed this problem by :

git submodule update --remote

Answer 5

For me, this tends to happen when I push a parent git repo back to github without pushing back a sub-module that I've modified and committed, but haven't pushed back.