Git Commit Freeze Due to GPG Lock Issues (Solution)

Git_Commit_Freeze_Solution.md

Git Commit Freeze Due to GPG Lock Issues

If you encounter a problem where you cannot commit changes in Git – neither through the terminal nor via the GitHub Desktop application – the issue might be a freeze during the Git commit process. This is often caused by GPG lock issues. Below is a concise and step-by-step guide to resolve this problem.

Solution Steps

1. Check for GPG Lock Messages

Open your terminal and try to perform a GPG operation (like signing a test message). If you see repeated messages like gpg: waiting for lock (held by [process_id]) ..., it indicates a lock issue.

For example:

❯ echo "test" | gpg --clearsign

gpg: waiting for lock (held by 3571) ...
gpg: waiting for lock (held by 3571) ...
gpg: waiting for lock (held by 3571) ...

2. Locate and Remove Stale Lock Files

List Lock Files:

For Linux:

ls -l ~/.gnupg/*.lock

For MacOS (Darwin):

ls -l ~/.gnupg/**/*.lock

This command lists all lockfiles in ~/.gnupg and its subdirectories without manual exploration.

Remove the Identified Stale Lock Files:

For general lock files:

rm ~/.gnupg/[name-of-the-stale-lock-file].lock

For Linux systems, if the above doesn't work, try removing the public keys database lock:

rm -f ~/.gnupg/public-keys.d/pubring.db.lock

3. Restart GPG-Agent

After removing any stale lock files, it's important to reset the state of the GPG agent.

Command to Restart GPG-Agent:

gpgconf --reload gpg-agent

4. Test GPG Operations

To confirm if the issue is with GPG itself, try signing a simple test message:

Run:

echo "test" | gpg --clearsign

5. Retry Committing in Git

With the GPG lock issue resolved, try committing your changes again in Git.

On Manjaro, my lock files are named like this: ~/.gnupg/.#lk0x00d0591fbc90a2d0.hostname.2134.
Presumably, .#lk identifies it as a lock file (see gnupg forum post).

Each file contains two lines:

• 1st line: the final decimal number from the filename, right-aligned (with leading spaces) to 10 characters,
• 2nd line: the hostname (also the same as in the filename).

I suspect the decimal number is a process-id.

I hope this is useful to somebody.