It has me puzzled as to what the cause could be of the problems you see.
I took the following steps, and everything worked after that.
1. Remove the folder /var/lib/bibledit-web and its contents completely.
2. Install the very newest bibledit-web from the repository as described here:
3. Set up a remote git repository to git://localhost/repository.
This works perfectly.
It was done on Ubuntu 12.10 workstation.
Here's some more information as to permissions in the relevant git folder in /var/lib...:
git:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Jun 13 17:16 test
git/test:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 4 www-data root 4096 Jun 13 17:16 Psalms
git/test/Psalms:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data root 4096 Jun 13 17:16 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data root 4096 Jun 13 17:16 80
git/test/Psalms/0:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data root 7 Jun 13 17:16 data
git/test/Psalms/80:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data root 2971 Jun 13 17:16 data
address@hidden:/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web$
send/receive: Starting to send and receive Bibles
send/receive: Processing any data left over from previous actions
send/receive: **********
send/receive: Bible: test
send/receive: Remote repository URL: git://localhost/repository
send/receive: Git repository directory: /var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test
send/receive: Transferring Bible text to file ...
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git add . 2>&1
send/receive: Exit code 0
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git status 2>&1
send/receive: # On branch master
send/receive: nothing to commit (working directory clean)
send/receive: Exit code 0
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git commit -a -m sync 2>&1
send/receive: # On branch master
send/receive: nothing to commit (working directory clean)
send/receive: Exit code 1
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git pull 2>&1
send/receive: Already up-to-date.
send/receive: Exit code 0
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git push 2>&1
send/receive: Everything up-to-date
send/receive: Exit code 0
send/receive: Moving the data that was changed into the database ...
send/receive: Listing the last few commits ...
send/receive: cd '/var/lib/bibledit-web/bibledit-web/git/test'; git log | head -n 24 2>&1
send/receive: commit 14524b4278ca7bf7d32126df884ac2534543eee1
send/receive: Date: Thu Jun 13 17:13:46 2013 +0200
send/receive:
send/receive: Exit code 0
send/receive: This Bible has been done.
Regards,
Teus.