I have two machines connected to my home network. machine A. Machine A has a git-annex repo which stores the data using a remote bup repo. The bup repo resides on Machine A itself. Now, I want to set up the same kind of environment in Machine B ( git annex repo backed down by bup remote). The only condition is that I need to re-use the bup repo in the machine A. So I went up like this: git clone ssh://192.168.1.33/path/to/git-annex-repo-on-machine-a This succeeded. The next step was to add a reference to the bup repo on machine A to this new git-annex repo in machine B. I went about like this: git annex initremote mybup type=bup encryption=none buprepo=192.168.1.33:/path/to/bup-repo-on-machine-a This seems to work OK, except the fact that the following shows up: Reinitialized existing Git repository in /Users/XXX/.bup/ Reinitialized existing Git repository in /Users/path/to/bup-repo-on-machine-a *Q1*: Why does git-annex create bup repos on the local folder while initializaing a remote bup repo? After that, I tried to get the file from the git repo using git annex get --from mybup ..And nothing happened. This is the debug output from the last command : read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","show-ref","git-annex"] read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","show-ref","--hash","refs/heads/git-annex"] read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","log","refs/heads/git- annex..c9af31cb3e563657e83b8b8e1f9a8de1ff690e4f","-n1","--pretty=%H"] read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","log","refs/heads/git-annex..b7b2af7f94af4770d5b4da7231bc3e41c0a6129d","-n1","--pretty=%H"] read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","log","refs/heads/git-annex..7b1017c5e68ec5a2b298b899bf723d0093fa0c7c","-n1","--pretty=%H"] chat: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","cat-file","--batch"] read: git ["--git-dir=/private/tmp/annexed-setups/.git","--work-tree=/private/tmp/annexed-setups","ls-files","--cached","-z","--","file.iso"] The file was not obtained from the remote. However, when I did git annex fsck --from mybup This resolved all the files properly and then when I did a git annex list. it showed all files to be reachable from the mybup repo. *Q2* Is this the correct workflow? *Q3* Do I need to do a [costly] fsck for bup remote to properly work over ssh?