gitosis and git clone problem

Question

I have installed gitosis, but i have strange thing when i'm working with repos. In config i have

[gitosis]

[group gitosis-admin]
writable = gitosis-admin
members = me@server me@laptop

[group prj1]
writable = prj1
members = me@laptop

and in /home/git/repositories i have created directory prj1.git with empty git repo.

i can work with gitosis-admin from server and laptop without problems, but when i'm trying to git clone prj1 on my laptop i see

$ git clone git@server:prj1.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/alec/temp/prj1/.git/
fatal: no matching remote head

ok, lets push prj1 from laptop to server:

$ git push origin master:refs/heads/master
ERROR:gitosis.serve.main:Repository read access denied
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Whats wrong?

Answer 1

Would the following, done on your laptop, solve this issue?
Instead of a git clone:

  mkdir prj1
  cd prj1
  git init
  touch README
  git add .
  git commit -m "Added blank readme"
  git remote add origin git@server:prj1.git
  git push origin master

ebneter adds in the comment:

You might mention that the reason this works is that you can't clone an empty repo.
(As my users regularly discover...

And that reminds the OP question:

... and in /home/git/repositories I have created directory prj1.git with empty git repo

which is not ideal right there.
This SO question mentions the issue of cloning an empty repo:

In other words, don't attempt to clone the empty repo, but rather after creating it, push to it a simple repo containing one innocuous file. Then it is no longer empty and can be cloned.

---

Since then, Chris Johnsen comments:

Any Git later than 1.6.2

(so actually since March 2009)

can “clone” empty repositories.
(scare quotes because it really just amounts normal initialization plus setting up a remote, and creating a tracking configuration for the presumed, eventual master branch).