GIT: Can't Push (Strange Config Issue)

Question 1

Okay, so I fixed it, but the method is absolute witchcraft.

I tried to isolate the problem by purging GIT, deleting the config file, reinstalling GIT, then creating a local bare repository, then cloning it, then attempting to push from there. Pretty much like this:

sudo apt-get purge git-core
rm -f ~/.gitconfig
sudo apt-get install git-core
cd /git
mkdir foo
cd foo
git init --bare
cd /var/www
git clone /git/foo
cd foo
touch blah.txt
git add -A
git config --global user.name "Name"
git config --global user.email "user@email.com"
git commit -m "Blah"
git push

...same exact error message, no change there. (Still some serious witchcraft.)

Then, I deleted one of my repositories that doesn't have a local origin (it connects to its origin via SSH) and cloned the repository anew after deleting it (with a fresh git clone ssh://... command).

I got an error from the clone command:

remote: Malformed value for push.default: simple
remote: Must be one of nothing, matching, tracking or current.

Ah ha! Now it says remote instead of error. So the remote doesn't support this behavior. (That doesn't explain why the error persists on local-only repositories with local origins, then, though.)

So I then SSH'ed into the remote server and updated the git-core there to the latest version, re-attempted to clone the repository from my local machine, and it worked.

Now, I can finally git push. Insanely, this also fixed it so I can git push from the entirely local /var/www/foo to the also entirely local /git/foo (the local origin bare repository). SSH'ing into this remote server and updating it somehow - WITCHCRAFT - fixed my local machine's error.

Why on earth the entirely local repos care about an entirely different machine's GIT version is... beyond me. How utterly, utterly insane.

Question 2

I had the same error message on git push.

For me it turned out that the remote user's git was an older version (1.7.2.5), and I had recently updated the remote ~/.gitconfig to include:

[push]
  default = simple

The solution was to remove this setting from the remote's configuration.

Question 3

Since it seems other people are having this issue, and I found a solution HERE, I thought I'd post the solution that worked for me.

IN SHORT: The solution I found was at this page. Evidently the best solution is to upgrade to a newer version of Git (if possible). That was not an option for me, however. From a local machine, I typed the following command:

git config -–global push.default upstream

This got rid of the Malformed value for push.default: simple error I had been getting. I'm not entirely sure what upstream does, however.

MY CONTEXT (for comparison): I had an empty (bare) repository on a remote computer, and I had a few repositories on a couple "local" workstations. I pull from the remote repository, do some work, and then push my work to the remote repository. Pushing/pulling was accomplished via SSH. Most of the time, while working on a local machine, pushing/pulling would result in the error described above.

In short, before the fix, I had the following ~/.gitconfig file on the remote machine:

[user]
        name = Foo Bar
        email = FooBarPerson@email.com
[diff]
        external = /Users/foobar/bin/git-diff-cmd.sh
[color]
        diff = auto
        status = auto
        branch = auto
[push]
        default = simple

After entering in the above command, my ~/.gitconfig file on the remote machine changed to:

[user]
        name = Foo Bar
        email = FooBarPerson@email.com
[diff]
        external = /Users/foobar/bin/git-diff-cmd.sh
[color]
        diff = auto
        status = auto
        branch = auto
[push]
        default = upstream

Version information:

Remote machine (repository location): 1.9.4
My laptop: 1.8.5.2 (Apple Git-48)
Other computer I work on: 1.7.7.4

Here's another site that may be useful to some people: http://www.lorrin.org/blog/2011/10/03/argumentless-git-pull-and-git-push/comment-page-1/