100-Days-Of-DevOps-Challenge-KodeKloud

Git Reset Hard

The Nautilus application development team was working on a git repository /usr/src/kodekloudrepos/ecommerce present on Storage server in Stratos DC. This was just a test repository and one of the developers just pushed a couple of changes for testing, but now they want to clean this repository along with the commit history/work tree, so they want to point back the HEAD and the branch itself to a commit with message add data.txt file. Find below more details:

• In /usr/src/kodekloudrepos/ecommerce git repository, reset the git commit history so that there are only two commits in the commit history i.e initial commit and add data.txt file.

• Also make sure to push your changes.

Steps

1. Log into storage server and move into repository

    sudo -i
    cd /usr/src/kodekloudrepos/ecommerce
   

2. Let’s check commits history

    git log --oneline
   

    [root@ststor01 ecommerce]# git log --oneline
    81e08fc (HEAD -> master, origin/master) Test Commit10
    686cb01 Test Commit9
    f0ff119 Test Commit8
    a8404ed Test Commit7
    a9fccf0 Test Commit6
    2554746 Test Commit5
    461c467 Test Commit4
    287d981 Test Commit3
    a63283d Test Commit2
    5479bcb Test Commit1
    90b2925 add data.txt file
    848a423 initial commit
   

3. Let’s reset the commit history to old one

    git reset --hard 90b2925
   

    root@ststor01 ecommerce]# git status
    On branch master
    Your branch is behind 'origin/master' by 10 commits, and can be fast-forwarded.
    (use "git pull" to update your local branch)
   
    nothing to commit, working tree clean
   

4. Push the changes

    git push --force
   

Good to Know?

Git Reset Types

• Soft: --soft - Move HEAD, keep staging and working directory
• Mixed: --mixed (default) - Move HEAD, reset staging, keep working
• Hard: --hard - Reset everything to specified commit
• Keep: --keep - Reset but keep uncommitted changes

Reset Dangers

• Data Loss: Hard reset can permanently lose changes
• Shared History: Never reset commits pushed to shared repositories
• Force Push: Required after resetting pushed commits
• Team Impact: Can break other developers’ work

Safe Alternatives

• Revert: Use for shared repositories
• New Branch: Create branch before risky operations
• Backup: Create backup branch before reset
• Stash: Save work-in-progress before reset

Recovery Options

• Reflog: git reflog shows recent HEAD movements
• Recovery: git reset --hard HEAD@{n} to restore
• Time Limit: Reflog entries expire after ~90 days
• Garbage Collection: git gc can remove unreachable commits

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