I'm setting up a git server (on a RHEL 6 box).
I have created the git user and set its shell to /usr/bin/git-shell I have created a directory git-shell-commands in the user's home (/home/git) and chmod it to 755.
I downloaded the help and list commands from github, put them in git-shell-commands and made them executable.
I also set up the .ssh directory and authorized_keys.
Now on my box when I do ssh git@thegitserver I get the error
Last login: Thu Jun 13 11:56:07 2013 from 192.168.1.2
fatal: What do you think I am? A shell?
Connection to 192.168.1.3 closed.
What else is there to do to make it interactive?
So this is a git version issue. The version that comes with RHEL 6 (1.7.1) is too old to properly work with the git-shell-commands directory. Upgrading to 1.8 solved this.