Getting error "unable to parse remote unpack status" when attempting to push to Azure Devops

Question

I was attempting to push a bunch of new files to my private Azure Devops source control repository using git and I get the following error:

error: unable to parse remote unpack status: ng refs/heads/dirtypiece/gdpr An error occurred while communicating with the remote host. The error code is 0x800703E5.

I also get this error when attempting to push a 12 MB video file up, but don't encounter the error when attempting to push up a small set of changes (like a single file).

Here's the full command and output I see for reference:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\git.exe" push -u --recurse-submodules=check --progress "origin" refs/heads/dirtypiece/gdpr:refs/heads/dirtypiece/gdpr Counting objects: 3622, done. Delta compression using up to 8 threads. Compressing objects: 100% (1602/1602), done. Writing objects: 100% (3622/3622), 11.53 MiB | 1.91 MiB/s, done. Total 3622 (delta 1926), reused 3545 (delta 1888) remote: We noticed you're using an older version of Git. For the best experience, upgrade to a newer version. error: unable to parse remote unpack status: ng refs/heads/dirtypiece/gdpr An error occurred while communicating with the remote host. The error code is 0x800703E5. Everything up-to-date Done

I don't remember ever hitting anything like this in the past when I've attempted to push up a large number of files (always seemed to push fine). I was thinking it might be a temporary throttling or resource constraint issue on the Azure Devops servers, but the issue has been happening for 2 days now.

I also checked the size of my repository to see if I was hitting a 10 GB limit or something like that, but it appears to be within tolerance:

$ git count-objects -vH count: 2248 size: 5.85 MiB in-pack: 123703 packs: 19 size-pack: 759.69 MiB prune-packable: 14 garbage: 0 size-garbage: 0 bytes

Has anyone encountered this issue before or know how to get around it? I've definitely pushed up more files and larger files in the past so am confused as to why this started happening.

Thanks for any advice!

Answer 1

Updating to the latest version of Git 2.19.0 solves this problem, this is based on the error message indicating and older version of Git being used.

Answer 2

We're currently tracking this on the Azure DevOps side. It's impacting a small percent of pushes, more frequently for large pushes with older versions of Git. Switching to SSH will bypass the issue. Upgrading Git may reduce the chance of hitting the issue.

We're currently working on a fix.

Update: At about 20:00 UTC on 9/27 we mitigated the issue.