Ian.
+> I'm guessing that this is some kind of permissions problem,
+> and that the error message is just being misleading.
+>
+> When you push the changes to the server, what user is
+> git logging into the server as? If that user is different
+> than `ian` (possibly due to using git-daemon?), the post-commit
+> wrapper needs to be setuid to `ian`. This ensures that ikiwiki
+> runs as you and can see and write to the files. --[[Joey]]
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Serge