error: src refspec refs/heads/master matches more than one.

From: Josef Wolf <jw@raven.inka.de>
Date: Feb 14, 2014, 11:31 UTC
Message-ID: <20140214113136.GA17817@raven.inka.de>

Hello folks,

after some commits to my master branch, I tried to push to the bare upstream repository and got this error message:

  error: src refspec refs/heads/master matches more than one.

A quick check shows that there's indeed something wrong:

  jw@kiste:/git/scan$ git branch -a | grep master
  * master
    refs/heads/master
    remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
    remotes/origin/master
  jw@kiste:/git/scan$ find .git -name master
  .git/refs/heads/master
  .git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/master
  .git/logs/refs/heads/master
  .git/logs/refs/heads/refs/heads/master
  jw@kiste:/git/scan$ find .git -name master
  .git/refs/heads
  .git/refs/heads/refs/heads
  .git/logs/refs/heads
  .git/logs/refs/heads/refs/heads
  jw@kiste:/git/scan$ find .git -name master

Notice the refs/heads _within_ refs/heads!

Now I wonder how I managed to get into this situation and what's the best way to recover?

Any ideas?

PS: this is git-1.8.1.4.

-- 
Josef Wolf
jw@raven.inka.de