git: fatal: empty ident <git@example.com> not allowed Jan 30

I use git like I used to use svn: one central repository, clients push/pull to it. I recently migrated the repository from a crappy Virtuozzo VPS (horrible, horrible disk access times...had to wait many seconds for ls to run) to a Xen one.

Everything seemed fine until today when I did my first git push, which returned the error:

fatal: empty ident <git@example.com> not allowed

It took me a while to figure out as .git/config had my user information set, and I even had a ~/.gitconfig file with default user information set. The git faq has an entry for this problem, but doesn't mention server set-up.

The problem was the git user on my new server didn't have any name information in /etc/passwd. It didn't have this on the old server either, but for whatever reason it needed it on the new one (the old server is too slow to bother investigating). I changed /etc/passwd on the server, giving the git user the full name of 'Git Git' and everything worked fine. It's weird that it cares...in the log, this user never shows up. Must be something to do with merging? Anyway, it works...

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