git - How to fix "corrupted" interactive rebase?

Question

I managed to create a little mess in my local git repository. I was trying to fix a broken commit by using the following instructions. Before running the "git commit --amend" (and after the git rebase --interactive) I decided that my changes were incorrect and so I executed "git reset HEAD --hard". Not a good idea, I tell you.

Now the interactive rebase seems to be "stuck". Git shows the current branch as (|REBASE-m). Every command (cd .., ls, git rebase...) inside my repository gives the following error:

cat: .git/rebase-merge/head-name: No such file or directory

Here's how git rebase --abort looks like:

$ git rebase --abort
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/quiet: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/head-name: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/orig-head: No such file or directory
HEAD is now at 4c737fb Revert "Modified file names"
rm: cannot remove `c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/done': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove directory `c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge': Directory
not empty
cat: .git/rebase-merge/head-name: No such file or directory

Here's the result of git rebase --continue:

$ git rebase --continue
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/prev_head: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/end: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/msgnum: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/onto: No such file or directory
cat: c:/_work/project/src/git/.git/rebase-merge/quiet: No such file or directory
prev_head must be defined
cat: .git/rebase-merge/head-name: No such file or directory

Any ideas? I would like to reset the situation back to the state it was before I started my well-thought rebase operation.

Here's how git log --oneline shows the situation:

4c737fb Revert "Modified file names"
247ac02 Modified file names
33141e6 Message modifications
10a4a04 Modified db script

And this is fine.

I'm using msysgit v1.7.0.2.

Answer 1

I got stuck in this. I created the head-name file, and then I ran into another error saying it couldn't find the onto file, so I created that file. Then I got another error saying could not read '.git/rebase-apply/onto': No such file or directory.

So I looked at the git documentation for rebasing and found another command:

git rebase --quit

This set me back on my branch with no changes, and I could start my rebase over again, good as new.