Git push error: Unable to unlink old (Permission denied)

Question

In the remote server I have a post-receive hook set up in order to make a git checkout of my repository:

#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=/var/www/<website> git checkout -f

But when I make a push from my local machine to the git repository in the server, I get the following error messages:

remote: error: unable to unlink old '<file>' (Permission denied)

This appears many times over, one error message for almost every file.

However I have a README.txt file that I'm able to change using git, here are its permissions:

-rw-r--r--  1 <serverusername>  <serverusername>  2939 Aug  2 10:58 README.txt

But other files with exactly the same owner and same permissions, give me that error.

In another local repository for another website, I have the files with my local machine username as owner, and when I push to the remote server it respects the remote server owner of the files and works like a charm.

Obviously it seems a permissions related error, but I can't find a way to fix it, any suggestions?

Answer 1

When you have to unlink file, you have to have permission 'w' for directory, in which file is, not for the file...