Gitlab: Can't push to master only

Question

I can't find a reson for being able to push changes in any branch other than master. I mean, I have master branch which I created by pushing my code to gitlab. Than, any tentative to push a change to master branch fails. Nevertheless, I duplicated my master branch with another branch named develop and on it I can push my changes. To make simple, let me put all I am doing after googling for while:

C:\dev\test>git fetch --all
Fetching origin

C:\dev\test>git reset --hard origin/master
HEAD is now at 64031f0 just created by generator

... some changes via my editor ....

C:\dev\test>git commit -a -m "changed project name"
[master 5abf2f2] changed project name
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

C:\dev\test>git push -u origin/master
fatal: 'origin/master' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

C:\dev\test>git push
Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 365 bytes | 365.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Error: This is the master branch, and the commit has no merge request
remote: 64031f03f1723e3399ad467dbbb536942fe144f0 5abf2f29e0ced51289d1fcd684b1510acd354764 refs/heads/master
To ssh://gitlab.mycomp.net:2222/myportfolio/mycomp-app-sf-just-test.git
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://[email protected]:2222/myportfolio/mycomp-app-sf-just-test.git'

C:\dev\test>git push -u origin master
Counting objects: 3, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 365 bytes | 365.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Error: This is the master branch, and the commit has no merge request
remote: 64031f03f1723e3399ad467dbbb536942fe144f0 5abf2f29e0ced51289d1fcd684b1510acd354764 refs/heads/master
To ssh://gitlab.mycomp.net:2222/myportfolio/mycomp-app-sf-just-test.git
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://[email protected]:2222/myportfolio/mycomp-app-sf-just-test.git'

In few words, most of answers I saw around tells either to use git push -u or to unprotect the branch. Now my gitlab project branch is unprotected and as you can see I am using -u

Answer 1

The issue here is by default master branch is protected one. You can change that setting if you want to using "Unprotect" button under Repository settings -> Protected branches. Also, you can change branch accessibility settings for merge , push for maintainer, developer level too. Refer screen for more detail.