default commit message for a tree

What needs to be done to setup a default commit message in git?

I did the following, trying to setup a default commit message (to get the equivalent of what I used to have with cg-commit in the past where 1/2 of my commit text was filled in automatically from a file in my tree ie default signed off line etc...

What I tried: First I did
    git-config commit.template commit-template

which changed the .git/config to add  new "[commit]" section (see below:
[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = false
        logallrefupdates = true
[remote "origin"]
        url = git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sfrench/cifs-2.6.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/master

[commit]
        template = commit-template

I created a file .git/commit-template with default text as follows:

[CIFS]

Signed-off-by: Steve French <sfrench@us.ibm.com>

Now doing a "git commiit -a" though does not show this text. It just shows the typical empty default message in vi e.g.

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. # (Comment lines starting with '#' will not be included) # On branch master # Changes to be committed: # (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage) # # modified: fs/cifs/CHANGES ....