How to Fix Git 'Permission Denied' error

🧠 Solution for My Noob and Impatient Users

• Check if your git credential is correctly set or not

  git config --list

  The output should look something like the following screenshot
• If you just want the fix (no stories, no theory):

  sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .git

  Here $USER is your username of ubuntu/ windows.

• Then retry your commit:

  git commit -m "your message"

Boom 💥— you’re done.

🧩 The Real Story Behind It

While working inside WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), I ran into this annoying error while trying to commit my Frappe app code:

fatal: could not open '.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG': Permission denied

At first, it looked like a random Git glitch. But it turns out it was me — I had previously run a Git command with sudo, and WSL dutifully created a few .git files owned by root.

That one small mistake locked me out from writing new commit messages.

🧾 Why It Happens in WSL

In WSL, file ownership behaves like a regular Linux system. When you use sudo inside your project folder, all files Git touches (like .git/config, index, COMMIT_EDITMSG) become owned by root. Later, when you try to run normal Git commands as your normal user, WSL politely says:

“Permission denied.”

It’s not Git’s fault — it’s Linux being strict about file ownership.

🛠️ Step-by-Step Fix

1. Check which files are owned by root

ls -l .git

You’ll see the output something like:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   52 Nov 12 02:28 COMMIT_EDITMSG
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  101 Nov 12 22:56 FETCH_HEAD
...

means:

There’s a file named COMMIT_EDITMSG that is owned by root, only root can edit it (others can only read it), and it was last modified on Nov 12 at 2:28 AM.

Here’s what each part means 👇

2. Take ownership back

Run this inside your repo:

Here $USER is your username of ubuntu/ windows.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .git

Which means:

“Give ownership of all .git files back to me.”

If you want to fix everything in your bench or project folder:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER ~/frappe-bench

3. Verify ownership

ls -ld .git

You should see:

drwxrwxr-x  ... sab sab ...

means:

“This is a directory owned by user sab. The owner and their group can read, write, and read it. Other users can only read and open it, but not modify it.”

💡 Quick Legend (for memory)

4. Retry your commit

git commit -m "fix: corrected social link fields and updated b_event script"

✅ It should now work flawlessly.

🚫 Don’t Use sudo git

This is the real lesson. Never use sudo with Git — not even once — unless you absolutely need to modify system-level repositories.

In a dev setup (especially WSL), you should always:

• Run Git as your normal Linux user
• Use SSH keys for authentication
• Avoid running any bench or git command with sudo unless it’s for system-level tasks

💡 Bonus Tip: Fix All Your Git Repos at Once

If you often work in multiple apps inside frappe-bench:

cd ~/frappe-bench/apps
for app in */; do sudo chown -R $USER:$USER "$app/.git"; done

That’ll recursively fix ownership for all apps in one go.

✅ Summary

🧩 Final Thoughts

WSL is amazing — but it plays by Linux rules. Once you stop mixing sudo with normal Git operations, life gets much smoother.

So next time you see “Permission Denied,” remember:

It’s not Git being stubborn — it’s just protecting your house keys from the wrong user. 🔑