how to properly update dumb-hosted repo (using rsync..?)

Hello!

I have a question related to dumb transports (i.e., http hosting without git).

I have a shell-accessible server which on which I have installed git,
but it is not a web server.  So to make my git repo public I have put
the repo on a web server which I cannot install git on.  I have made a
post-update hook on my server repo which runs git-update-server-info
and then uses rsync to copy the repo over to the public web server.
So far so good.  I am able to clone the http-hosted repo and push
changes to my private server which then get copied over to the http
repo.

However, after a git-push/rsync operation, I typed git-pull to try and
pull the changes I'd just made, and got the following:

-------------------
$ git-pull
Warning: No merge candidate found because value of config option
         "branch.master.merge" does not match any remote branch fetched.
No changes.
-------------------

However I haven't done any branching in this cloned repo, it is
immediately after a git-clone from the web server.

My .git/config basically looks like this, minus the "core" section:

-------------------
[remote "origin"]
        url = http://my.server.com/git/project.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/master
-------------------

Which seems fine to me...
Any ideas?
This is of course only for people who want to clone my web-hosted repo
and then be able to subsequently git-pull my updates.

thanks,
Steve