cryptic git status: "failed to push some refs"

A first stumble with git: error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:/spazm/examples.git'.

And here's how I fixed it.

[agrangaard@willamette]% git fetch                               129 ~/examples
[agrangaard@willamette]% git push                                  0 ~/examples
To git@github.com:/spazm/examples.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast forward)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:/spazm/examples.git'

In my case, this meant I had a merge conflict. git status showed no changes and a git fetch wasn't listing an action nor listing any changes.

Once I realized I needed to do a git pull, more specifically a git pull origin master, the merged code was pulled in.

[agrangaard@willamette]% git pull origin master                    0 ~/examples
From git@github.com:/spazm/examples
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
Auto-merged jira.conf
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in jira.conf
Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.
[agrangaard@willamette]% git status                                1 ~/examples
jira.conf: needs merge
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
#
#       unmerged:   jira.conf
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
[agrangaard@willamette]% vi jira.conf                              1 ~/examples

Since there was a manual merge needed, I opened jira.conf and cleared out the diff. Then I committed it locally and in the master repository:

 [agrangaard@willamette]% git add jira.conf                         1 ~/examples
[agrangaard@willamette]% git status                                0 ~/examples
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD ..." to unstage)
#
#       modified:   jira.conf
#
[agrangaard@willamette]% git commit                                0 ~/examples
Created commit e69f257: Update jira.conf
[agrangaard@willamette]% git status                                0 ~/examples
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
[agrangaard@willamette]% git push                                  1 ~/examples
Counting objects: 13, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Writing objects: 100% (9/9), 1.71 KiB, done.

And now my local check-out is in sync with my remote repository at github. Woo!