/kind bug

Description

For pull requests, automation executes a series of 'make' targets against a clone of the author's forked/branched code. A required optimization in this process is to limit the checks to only encompass a commit range beginning with a a known upstream branch commit (commonly referred to as the Epoch commit).

However, depending on the starting-point for the authors fork'd branch, the Epoch commit used during these checks may not be reachable. This results in one or more gate task checks failing. When this fails during the git validation check, the tool or script throws an error 128

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Fork upstream libpod repostory

2. Create a working branch, make a small change and commit.

3. Open a pull request

Describe the results you received:

Gate task fails with error 128

Describe the results you expected:

Gate task passes

Additional information you deem important (e.g. issue happens only occasionally):

This environment variable set in .cirrus.yml is significant:

EPOCH_TEST_COMMIT: "${CIRRUS_BASE_SHA}"