Hi, When I run 'git branch' in the linux-2.6 repo I think it takes too long to finish (with cold cache): [mafra@Pilar:linux-2.6]$ time git branch 27-stable 28-stable 29-stable 30-stable dev-private * master option sparse stern 0.00user 0.05system 0:05.73elapsed 1%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (209major+1380minor)pagefaults 0swaps This is with git 1.6.4.rc1.10.g2a67 and the kernel is 2.6.31-rc3+. The machine is a 64bit Vaio laptop which is 1+ year old (so it is not "slow"). Repeating the command a second time takes basically zero seconds, but this is more or less what I would expect in the first time too. I use git to track linux-2.6 for 2 years now, and I remember that 'git branch' is slow for quite some time, so it is not a regression or something. It is just now that I took the courage to report this small issue. I did a 'strace' and this is where it spent most of the time: 1248301060.654911 open(".git/refs/heads/sparse", O_RDONLY) = 6 1248301060.654985 read(6, "60afdf6a4065a170ad829b4d79a86ec0"..., 255) = 41 1248301060.655056 read(6, "", 214) = 0 1248301060.655116 close(6) = 0 1248301060.680754 lstat(".git/refs/heads/stern", 0x7fff80bfa8d0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) 1248301064.018491 fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0 1248301064.018641 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f409ffa7000 1248301064.018722 write(1, " 27-stable\33[m\n", 15) = 15 I don't know why .git/refs/heads/stern does not exist and why it takes so long with it. That branch is functional ('git checkout stern' succeeds), as well as all the others. But strangely .git/refs/heads/ contains only [mafra@Pilar:linux-2.6]$ ls .git/refs/heads/ dev-private master sparse which, apart from "master", are the last branches that I created. I occasionally run 'git gc --aggressive --prune" to optimize the repo, but other than that I don't do anything fancy, just 'pull' almost every day and 'bisect' (which is becoming a rare event now :-) So I would like to ask what should I do to recover the missing files in .git/refs/heads/ (which apparently is the cause for my issue) and how I can avoid losing them in the first place. Also, is there a way to "fix" the 4-secs pause in that lstat() in case the files in .git/refs/heads/ get lost again? Thanks in advance, Carlos -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html