rebase fails but not sure why

I have been doing repeated rebase on my repository to try and separate out 
mixed streams of development into separate branches.

I have now got to a point where the following error occurs during a rebase.

fatal: empty ident  [off-list ref] not allowed
Commit failed, please do not call "git commit"
directly, but instead do one of the following:

When you have resolved this problem run "git rebase --continue".
If you would prefer to skip this patch, instead run "git rebase --skip".
To restore the original branch and stop rebasing run "git rebase --abort".

but I am not sure how to solve issue.

git status shows a number of files waiting to be commited, but no unmerged 
files. but git rebase --continue just pumps out the same error message.


-- 
Alan Chandler

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 12:26:58AM +0000, Alan Chandler wrote:

I have now got to a point where the following error occurs during a rebase.

fatal: empty ident  [off-list ref] not allowed
Commit failed, please do not call "git commit"
directly, but instead do one of the following:

It should be pulling that identity from the old commit (using git-commit
-C). Do you have a commit object with a blank author or committer name
(which shouldn't have been allowed in the first place, but you never
know)? Try running git-log on the range of commits being rebased.

On Thursday 23 November 2006 00:26, Alan Chandler wrote:

I have now got to a point where the following error occurs during a rebase.

fatal: empty ident  [off-list ref] not allowed
Commit failed, please do not call "git commit"
directly, but instead do one of the following:

I had run 

git rebase --merge --onto b1 b2 b3

I aborted it and ran 

git rebase --onto b1 b2 b3

and it works!

-- 
Alan Chandler