Question

I’ve installed msysgit Git-1.7.10-preview20120409.exe from here http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list on my Windows Server 2003 64-bit machine. I included “Git Bash here” during the setup. When I select “Git Bash here” for any folder listed in Windows Explorer I get

C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\sh.exe: * fork: can’t reserve memory
for stack 0x490000 – 0x690000, Win32 error 0
0 [main] sh.exe” 1348 sync_with_child: child 2612(0xF8) died before initia lization with status code 0x1
145 [main] sh.exe” 1348 sync_with_child: * child state waiting for longjmp

sh.exe”: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable sh.exe”-3.1$

But, the Start Menu item Git, Git Bash does not encounter the same problem. Instead I get

Welcome to Git (version 1.7.10-preview20120409)

Run ‘git help git’ to display the help index. Run ‘git help ‘
to display help for specific commands.

dmoore@DC1-2K3 ~ $

I suppose the Windows Explorer shell extension should use c:\windows\syswow64\cmd.exe but I don’t know how to tell it to do that.

Any suggestions are much appreciated,
[e-mail]

Answer 1

OK, so it looks like on 64-bit XP and Server 2003, the 64-bit (default) wscript process can’t properly launch bash, and since that’s how the menu entry is set up in the registry, it’s causing this issue while the start menu shortcut explicitly specifies the syswow64 version.

The solution is to edit the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\git_shell\command “default” value.

It probably looks like wscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\Git Bash.vbs" "%1"

Change it to something like C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wscript "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\Git Bash.vbs" "%1" as appropriate (if your windows directory is elsewhere, etc.)

This should be brought up as a bug with the git for windows people, unfortunately it looks like they closed their bug tracker.