Sourcetree 3.2.6 FATAL ERROR: Server unexpectedly closed network connection
Asked by chrisharshman:

Hello,

Whenever I try and clone anything through Sourcetree 3.2.6 it outputs this error, on any computer. However, I can access the repositories through the command line just fine.

"git -c filter.lfs.smudge= -c filter.lfs.required=false -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false --no-optional-locks clone --branch master [git@bitbucket.org](mailto:git@bitbucket.org):company/project.git D:\\Dev\\Repos\\project  
Cloning into 'D:\\Dev\\Repos\\project'...  
FATAL ERROR: Server unexpectedly closed network connection  
fatal: early EOF  
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly  
fatal: index-pack failed

Completed with errors, see above."

I have run out of steps to try and fix this, my Google-Fu has failed thus far.


Answers:
author: Sarah Bailey
body: Did you find a fix for this?

comments: author: chrisharshman
body: Not yet, it seems to be better now a little bit but if you just keep retrying it eventually goes through, it only happens on the first clone.

You can also pull the Repo via command line and then hook it up in SourceTree, I have been doing that for now when it happens.


author: Sarah Bailey
body: Yes, git bash command line works.

Through Sourcetree, it seems to throw the error only for our large project. The Sourcetree clone operation works for all other (regular-sized) projects.

I've found that it does work in Sourcetree if you change the clone depth to 1 (under **Advanced Options** \> **Clone depth** ). This is a git "shallow" clone, which lets you pull down just the latest commits, not the entire repo history. A depth of 1 copies only the latest revision of a repo.

I've also read something about changing the git http.postBuffer size, but I haven't explored that. We're using SSH, so I'm not sure if that has any impact.


author: chrisharshman
body: I will give that a try next time I encounter this problem.


author: freelensia
body: Just to let you guys know, we had the same problem but changing clone depth to 1 did not help. Our repo size is around 300MB.

It turns out the issue is that folder that we clone into did not exist. We had to create on Windows. We also tried <https://crypted2.com/2018/01/06/fix-sourcetree-git-over-ssh/>

Not sure which one fixed the problem.


author: durval.pires
body: [@Freeh](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/624596) you saved my life, the one that did it was the putty reinstall. Thank youuuu


author: Harikrishna.Pasavala1
body: Hi, I am also getting same error and tried above solution, but it didn't work for me. Can any one help me on this ?  

git -c filter.lfs.smudge= -c filter.lfs.required=false -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false --no-optional-locks clone --branch master git@git.ng.bluemix.net:\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*/wcs9.git C:\\wcs9  
Cloning into 'C:\\wcs9'...  
FATAL ERROR: Server unexpectedly closed network connection  
fetch-pack: unexpected disconnect while reading sideband packet  
fatal: early EOF  
fatal: index-pack failed  
Completed with errors, see above.


author: Danish Nazir Arain
body: [@Sarah Bailey](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2426287) You are a life saver. Who knew updating Putty will work.