After successfully using a central object store with git://... instead of rsync://... (thanks to Sam and Linus), I've run into the next problem: $ env | grep GIT GIT_AUTHOR_NAME=Joern Engel GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY=/home/joern/.git GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=joern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx $ git pull git://git.infradead.org/mtd-2.6.git Unpacking 74 objects 100% (74/74) done Trying really trivial in-index merge... Wonderful. fatal: empty ident <joern@limerick.(none)> not allowed Adding this to .git/config solved the problem: [user] name = "Joern Engel" email = "joern@xxxxxxx" And now I have some questions: 1. Why didn't the environment variables work? 2. Why is there a check for commit information when I pull from some tree? Jörn -- I've never met a human being who would want to read 17,000 pages of documentation, and if there was, I'd kill him to get him out of the gene pool. -- Joseph Costello - : send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html