In this snippet- Christian explains how to fix the empty ident error using a bleeding edge git. In older git versions this must be done manually. So if you get this error…

   1  *** Environment problem:
   2  *** Your name cannot be determined from your system services (gecos).
   3  *** You would need to set GIT_AUTHOR_NAME and GIT_COMMITTER_NAME
   4  *** environment variables; otherwise you won't be able to perform
   5  *** certain operations because of "empty ident" errors.
   6  *** Alternatively, you can use user.name configuration variable.
   7  
   8  fatal: empty ident  <.....@......com> not allowed

... then add the following parameters to your ~/.bashrc file and source it with . ~/.bashrc (or relogin, alternatively):

   1  export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Marko Haapala"
   2  export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="Marko Haapala"