pushing fails - WHY?

I am just coming back to repeat the setting up of my public git repositories 
after loosing them in a disk crash a little while ago.

The first repository I am setting up is called akclib on server roo.home

so in /var/lib/git on that machine I did

mkdir akclib.git
GIT_DIR akclib.git git init-db --shared

Back on my workstation where my master repository resides

~/dev/akcmoney

I have a .git/remotes/public file which contains

URL:roo.home:/var/lib/git/akclib.git
Push:master

BUT WHEN I attempt to push -  thus

alan@kanger:~/dev/akclib[master]$ git push public
fatal: remote 'public' has no URL

It fails.  But I don't understand why. Can someone point me at what I am doing 
wrong.

(git is version 1.4.2.1 on the workstation, 1.4.1 on the server)

-- 
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk