git local master branch stopped tracking remotes/origin/master, can't push

Question

Just when I thought I'd got the hang of the git checkout -b newbranch - commit/commit/commit - git checkout master - git merge newbranch - git rebase -i master - git push workflow in git, something blew up, and I can't see any reason for it.

Here's the general workflow, which has worked for me in the past:

# make sure I'm up to date on master:
$ git checkout master
$ git pull # k, no conflicts
# start my new feature
$ git checkout -b FEATURE9 # master @ 2f93e34

Switched to a new branch 'FEATURE9'

... work, commit, work, commit, work, commit...

$ git commit -a
$ git checkout master
$ git merge FEATURE9
$ git rebase -i master # squash some of the FEATURE9 ugliness

Ok so far; now what I expect to see -- and normally do see -- is this:

$ git status

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
#
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

But instead, I only see "nothing to commit (working directory clean)", no "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.", and git pull shows this weirdness:

$ git pull
From .                                        # unexpected
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD # unexpected
Already up-to-date.                           # expected

And git branch -a -v shows this:

$ git branch -a -v

  FEATURE9                 3eaf059 started feature 9
* master                   3eaf059 started feature 9
  remotes/origin/HEAD      -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master    2f93e34 some boring previous commit # should=3eaf059

git branch clearly shows that I'm currently on * master, and git log clearly shows that master (local) is at 3eaf059, while remotes/origin/HEAD -> remotes/origin/master is stuck back at the fork.

Ideally I'd like to know the semantics of how I might have gotten into this, but I would settle for a way to get my working copy tracking the remote master again & get the two back in sync without losing history. Thanks!

(Note: I re-cloned the repo in a new directory and manually re-applied the changes, and everything worked fine, but I don't want that to be the standard workaround.)

Addendum: The title says "can't push", but there's no error message. I just get the "already up to date" response even though git branch -a -v shows that local master is ahead of /remotes/origin/master. Here's the output from git pull and git remote -v, respectively:

$ git pull
From .
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Already up-to-date.

$ git remote -v
origin  [email protected]:proj.git (fetch)
origin  [email protected]:proj.git (push)

Addendum 2: It looks as if my local master is configured to push to the remote, but not to pull from it. After doing for remote in 'git branch -r | grep -v master '; do git checkout --track $remote ; done, here's what I have. It seems I just need to get master pulling from remotes/origin/master again, no?

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: [email protected]:proj.git
  Push  URL: [email protected]:proj.git
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    experiment_f tracked
    master    tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    experiment_f merges with remote experiment_f
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    experiment_f pushes to experiment_f (up to date)
    master    pushes to master    (local out of date)

Answer 1

When you do a git pull did you actually want to do a git push?

For some reason git pull is "pulling" from your current directory, I suspect you want to be pulling from remotes/origin/HEAD.

What output does git push origin produce?

[Addendum by Paul]: This led me to the correct answer, so I'm accepting. The additional steps it took to figure out what was going on were:

# see details of the current config:
$ git config -l
branch.master.remote=. # uh oh, this should point to origin
# to see what it should be ,make a clean clone of the same project 
#   in a different directory, checkout the master branch and run the
#   same command. That showed "branch.master.remote=origin", so...

# then to fix:
$ git config branch.master.remote origin

After that, the local master was tracking remotes/origin/master again. Thanks to Peter Farmer for the clue that got me here!