Confusing git pull error message

Hi,

  Because of another bug in git https, sometimes "git ls-remote
origin" only sees a small subset of the actually available branches.
This lasts until someone using git:// makes a commit.

  So anyway, I tried to do a "git pull" and it gives me the misleading error:

You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you want to merge with, and 'branch.master.merge' in your configuration file does not tell me either. Please name which branch you want to merge on the command line and try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>'). See git-pull(1) for details on the refspec.

If you often merge with the same branch, you may want to configure the following variables in your configuration file:

    branch.master.remote = <nickname>
    branch.master.merge = <remote-ref>
    remote.<nickname>.url = <url>
    remote.<nickname>.fetch = <refspec>

See git-config(1) for details.

But the actual problem is that "master" doesn't exist on origin. So basically I _have_ told it what branch.master.remote and branch.master.merge etc is, it's just that they don't appear to exist.

Thanks,

John