I am struggling for so long time, everytime getting different errors :( :(

I digged up my backup and started from scratch. Still not working.

On the (linux) server (directory contains already files):

     cd bin
     git init
     git annex init server
     git annex direct
     git annex add .

Then, on the Windows client:

     $ git clone ssh://me@server/srv/data/bin bin
     Cloning into 'bin'...
     warning: remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout.

What's going on here?

EDIT: Of course, I would not ask if everything would work as expected. But the client repository in windows is always empty, no matter what I do (issueing git annex init, git add remote, git annex sync, ...) does not seem to help me ...

EDIT2: When I continue on the windows side (despite the warning):

     cd bin
     git annex init client
     git annex sync
     Permission denied (publickey,keyboard-interactive).
     (merging origin/git-annex origin/synced/git-annex into git-annex...)
     (Recording state in git...)
     
       Remote origin does not have git-annex installed; setting annex-ignore
     commit  ok
     pull origin Already up-to-date!
     Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy.
     
     
     ok
     push origin To ssh://me@server/srv/data/bin
        b79922f..4fe0505  git-annex -> synced/git-annex
        2f6a601..02a2603  annex/direct/master -> synced/master
     
     ok


But that's not true, git-annex is definitely installed on the server (it's just the Debian package and it resides in /usr/bin/git-annex). In any case, the client repository is still empty

EDIT3: Struggle, struggle, ...

Finally, for whatever reason, the client dir is not empty. What seems to be missing on the server was:

     git annex sync

but this is never written (also not in the walkthrough). Can anyone tell me if it's required and why?

Furthermore, even that I "see" at least the file references now, I am not able to get them:

     $ git annex get apps
     get apps/gitignore (not available)
       Try making some of these repositories available:
             10d0ffd8-f499-4b55-83e6-ff58cd98edc5 -- server
     
       (Note that these git remotes have annex-ignore set: origin)
     failed
     git-annex: get: 1 failed

That's an SSH remote, it *is* available! What is meant by that?