When phabricator attempts to update a bare repo, it uses a command of the form 'git fetch <remotename>'. For repos cloned by git < 1.7.2, origin is not automatically created and updates fail with:
fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
This manifests in daemon logs similar to the following:
[2013-10-31 22:44:57] EXCEPTION: (PhutilProxyException) Error while fetching changes to the 'CALLSIGN' repository. {>} (Exception) git fetch failed with error #128: stdout: stderr:fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly at [/usr/share/phabricator/src/applications/repository/engine/PhabricatorRepositoryPullEngine.php:253] #0 phlog(Object PhutilProxyException) called at [/usr/share/phabricator/src/applications/repository/daemon/PhabricatorRepositoryPullLocalDaemon.php:159] #1 PhabricatorRepositoryPullLocalDaemon::run() called at [/usr/share/libphutil/src/daemon/PhutilDaemon.php:81] #2 PhutilDaemon::execute() called at [/usr/share/libphutil/scripts/daemon/exec/exec_daemon.php:112]
This is a bug specific to older versions of git and has been fixed as of 1.7.2