The user is logging as ian, the same user as the laptop. I can push and pull git repos on the same server owned by the same user via ssh with no problem. I have deleted and re-started from scratch several times. However, for my use case I think it's simpler to keep the repo on my local computer and just rsync the web pages to the server.
Ian.
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+Ian, you've copied over the repo created by ikiwiki --setup, which contains hook/post-update - just remove that file which is not required anymore on the git server side.
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+Serge