$ bzr push bzr+ssh://server/bzr/project/trunk bzr: ERROR: Generic bzr smart protocol error: bad protocol marker "error\x01Generic bzr smart protocol error: bad request u'bzr request 2'\n"
My client was running:
$ bzr version Bazaar (bzr) 1.3.1
Yet the server I was pushing to was running Debian Etch and so had:
$ bzr version Bazaar (bzr) 0.11.0
Updated bzr on the server from the backports.org repository with this package and it started working.
Back to understanding how to use the damn program.