'Git could not checkout' error is causing problem while deploying an app on engineyard

I'm trying to deploy an app on engine yard. I'm using rails 2.3.5 and ruby 1.8.7

When I try to deploy it,

~> Deploying revision 481f05e emergency commit
:: running git checkout -q '481f05e42f3e13b5eda7e598a1b797b031c9ca5e'
:: running git submodule sync
Synchronizing submodule url for ''
:: running git submodule update --init

No submodule mapping found in .gitmodules for path 'school'
No submodule mapping found in .gitmodules for path 'school'
*** [Error] Git could not checkout (481f05e42f3e13b5eda7e598a1b797b031c9ca5e) ***

Is the git submodule sync causing the problem?

I do not have any submodules in my repository.

Solution

I do not have any submodules in my repository.

That means you shouldn't see any .gitmodules file in your repo.
If there is, that means that you have somehow a submodule declared (in which case you might want to remove it).

If there isn't any .gitmodules file, then something within the school path makes the deployment script believe it is a submodules, and tries to access the (non-existent) .gitmodules file of the parent repo.
May be school has a .git directory in it?