"git filter-branch" successfully used to change committer/author, but changes don't reflect on github

Question

I recently replaced the author, committer and emails thereof in all of my local commits, using the following command:

git filter-branch -f --env-filter '
if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_NAME" = "oldname" ];
then
    GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="newname";
    GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="newaddr";
    GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="newname";
    GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="newaddr";
fi

if [ "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME" = "oldname" ];
then
    GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="newname";
    GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="newaddr";
    GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="newname";
    GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="newaddr";
fi
' -- --all

The updates are immediately evident locally (e.g. in my SourceTree environment). However, after force-pushing the modified repository to GitHub…

git push -f origin master

… two individual items stubbornly refuse to have their committer and author updated: the Gemfile.lock file and a Views directory.

Please also note that:

1. This is the second time that I am performing this kind of operation on this repository. I believe that I faced no such issues the first time around.

2. Searching for my old name in the repository…

   $ find . "<oldname">
   

… does yield a bunch of results, which means that the oldname still lurks in many of the repository files — including files that appear update both on GitHub and locally.

My question, then: How can I change the committer/author of the two "stubborn" files on GitHub?

Answer 1

After using git filter-branch, git still retains a backup copy of the history of the repo in refs/original. This is so that if you mess something up with filter-branch, you can revert if need be. Once you're sure everything went smoothly, you can remove the backed up ref with:

git update-ref -d refs/original/refs/heads/master

For some reason, it still takes an additional commit for github to reflect the change. I'll add a space or something to the readme, commit and push... after that, github reflects the correct authors on the project page.