e227045b06d62ee7d2fbab9d5ade9030ff43170b is the last commit imported from CVS. All commits after that one have valid author and committer information. Use this to examine the change log for earlier changes: $ git show e227045b06d62ee7d2fbab9d5ade9030ff43170b:ChangeLog $ git show e227045b06d62ee7d2fbab9d5ade9030ff43170b:ChangeLog.0 $ git show e227045b06d62ee7d2fbab9d5ade9030ff43170b:ChangeLog.00