How to pull local master into local branch

Question

I have a remote origin/master and a remote branch remote_branch. I also have local master and a local branch local_branch. When I try to pull the local master into the local_branch with git pull master local_branch I get this.

fatal: 'master' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

However, when I do git branch I see this:

* loca_branch
  master

Why can't I pull from my local master?

Answer 1

merge changes from local_branch TO master

git checkout master
git merge local_branch

merge changes from master TO local_branch

git checkout local_branch
git merge master

Pull is when you have an 'origin' repo :)

Answer 2

git pull is an alias for git fetch && git merge you cannot fetch from local branches (only from remotes) - actually you don't need to, if your intention is to merge master into local_branch, just use git merge master when you are on local_branch.