Set Up a Minimal Git Server

Github is well-known and we are enjoying it, but now I will set up a minimal Git server on Ubuntu according to Git on the Server for some reason you have to set up your own hosting repositories, and it really works well.

Minimal Git Server

Get server information: Kernel and IP address.

me@ubuntu:~$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 3.8.0-19-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 17 18:19:42 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

me@ubuntu:~$ sudo ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0c:29:e2:b7:55  
          inet addr:192.168.1.111  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fee2:b755/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:18521 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:15017 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:13819275 (13.8 MB)  TX bytes:4889250 (4.8 MB)
          Interrupt:19 Base address:0x2000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:17632 (17.6 KB)  TX bytes:17632 (17.6 KB)

1 . Create user

First, create a git user for your git repositories.

$ sudo adduser git

2 . Generate SSH Keys

Generate ssh keys for users, dylan for example.

git@ubuntu:~$ ssh-keygen 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/git/.ssh/id_rsa): /home/git/.ssh/id_rsa.dylan
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in id_rsa.dylan.
Your public key has been saved in id_rsa.dylan.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
e5:f7:49:15:6d:39:0a:6e:02:57:4f:6b:c9:e3:d9:c0 git@ubuntu
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|          .. . .o|
|       . . .= oo+|
|        o o .E..o|
|         + oo.=. |
|        S + .o.. |
|           . o . |
|              o  |
|                 |
|                 |
+-----------------+

3 . Setting Up the Server

Now, append the public keys into the authorized_keys file.

git@ubuntu:~$ cd .ssh

git@ubuntu:~/.ssh$ ls -l
total 40
drwx------ 2 git git 4096 Dec 23 10:26 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 git git 4096 Nov 18 18:04 ../
-rw------- 1 git git    0 Nov 18 17:49 authorized_keys
-rw------- 1 git git 1679 Dec 23 10:22 id_rsa.dylan
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git  392 Dec 23 10:22 id_rsa.dylan.pub
-rw------- 1 git git 1675 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.gandhi
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git  392 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.gandhi.pub
-rw------- 1 git git 1679 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.mandela
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git  392 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.mandela.pub
-rw------- 1 git git 1679 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.suukyi
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git  392 Dec 23 10:26 id_rsa.suukyi.pub

git@ubuntu:~/.ssh$ cat *.pub >> authorized_keys 

Then, initialize a bare git repository.

git@ubuntu:~$ cd repositories/
git@ubuntu:~/repositories$ ls -l
total 8
drwxrws--- 2 git git 4096 Nov 18 17:49 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 git git 4096 Dec 23 10:34 ../

git@ubuntu:~/repositories$ mkdir web.git
git@ubuntu:~/repositories$ cd web.git/
git@ubuntu:~/repositories/web.git$ git --bare init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/git/repositories/web.git/

git@ubuntu:~/repositories/web.git$ ls -l
total 40
drwxrwsr-x 7 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 ./
drwxrws--- 3 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 ../
drwxrwsr-x 2 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 branches/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 git git   66 Dec 23 11:15 config
-rw-rw-r-- 1 git git   73 Dec 23 11:15 description
-rw-rw-r-- 1 git git   23 Dec 23 11:15 HEAD
drwxrwsr-x 2 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 hooks/
drwxrwsr-x 2 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 info/
drwxrwsr-x 4 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 objects/
drwxrwsr-x 4 git git 4096 Dec 23 11:15 refs/

4 . Client Test

First, get the ssh private key from the server, id_rsa.dylan for example.

git@ubuntu:~/.ssh$ sz id_rsa.dylan
*B00000000000000

Start a git-bash window on the client, and move id_rsa.dylan to id_rsa:

$ ~ mv id_rsa.dylan ~/.ssh/id_rsa

dev$ ~ ls
id_rsa

Configure your global git options:

$ git config --global user.name "Dylanninin Gogh"
$ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

$ git config -l
user.name=Dylanninin Gogh
[email protected]
color.ui=true
core.editor=vim

Create a new git repository and push to the remote git server：

$ cd /f/Workspace/web

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in f:/Workspace/web/.git/

$ git add .

	$ git commit -m 'initial commit'
[master (root-commit) a8c85ac] initial commit
 14 files changed, 15063 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 1.html
 create mode 100644 css/todos.css
 create mode 100644 js/app.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/backbone-edge.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/backbone-min.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/backbone.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/backbone.localStorage.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/jquery.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/json2.js
 create mode 100644 js/lib/underscore.js
 create mode 100644 js/models/todos.js
 create mode 100644 js/demo.js
 create mode 100644 todos.html
 create mode 100644 ws_client.html

$ git remote add origin [email protected]:~/repositories/web.git

$ git push origin master
Counting objects: 20, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (17/17), done.
Writing objects: 100% (20/20), 192.52 KiB, done.
Total 20 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 9)
To [email protected]:~/repositories/web.git
 * [new branch]      master -> master

Show git log on the server:

git@ubuntu:~/repositories/web.git$ git log
commit 27e266eb7b67514ae00d7c1aba4539b43ca60680
Author: dylanninin <[email protected]>
Date:   Mon Dec 23 11:21:53 2013 +0800

    initial commit
git@ubuntu:~/repositories/web.git$

5 . Security

For extra precaution, you can easily restrict the ‘git’ user to only doing Git activities with a limited shell tool called git-shell that comes with Git.

me@ubuntu:~$ sudo whereis git-shell
git-shell: /usr/bin/git-shell /usr/bin/X11/git-shell /usr/share/man/man1/git-shell.1.gz
me@ubuntu:~$ sudo usermod -s /usr/bin/git-shell git

Shell into the machine will get a login rejection:

me@ubuntu:~$ sudo su - git
fatal: Interactive git shell is not enabled.
hint: ~/git-shell-commands should exist and have read and execute access.

Client side:

$ ssh [email protected]

Welcome to Ubuntu 13.04 (GNU/Linux 3.8.0-19-generic i686)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

  System information as of Mon Dec 23 09:20:33 HKT 2013


	New release '13.10' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

Last login: Mon Dec 23 11:39:20 2013 from 192.168.1.1

fatal: Interactive git shell is not enabled.
hint: ~/git-shell-commands should exist and have read and execute access.
Connection to 192.168.1.111 closed.

6 . GitWeb

You may want to set up a simple web-based visualizer. Git comes with a CGI script called GitWeb that is commonly used for this.

git.kernel

For further details, continue reading GitWeb.

Client-side Setting Up

You may have multiple Git accounts (always with multiple SSH keys for different accounts respectively), or the remote SSH server (Git’s most common transport protocol) is running not at the default (the well-known) 22 port, and it will work well with the minimal salvation through suffering for the elegance of design of Git and SSH.

Here’s an example for a client-side setting up on Windows 7, and you may have to download a Git tool from http://www.git-scm.com/download/win, which will provide a minimal GNU/Linux environment for the Windows platform.

1 . Multiple accounts (Github, and my own git server)

Create the configure file to specify different account settings, host, identify file or user, etc.

$ echo ~
/c/Users/[email protected]

$ touch ~/.ssh/config

$ cat ~/.ssh/config
#github account
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile /c/Users/[email protected]/.ssh/id_rsa.github
    User git

#ubuntu account
Host 192.168.1.111
    HostName 192.168.1.111
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile /c/Users/[email protected]/.ssh/id_rsa.ubuntu
    User git

2 . Non-default port (65500 for example)

Modify the configure file of your git repository (always local_repo/.git/config), change the line:

url = [email protected]:65500/home/git/repositories/web.git

to:

url = ssh://[email protected]:65500/home/git/repositories/web.git

and the entire config file may look like this:

$ cat web/.git/config
[core]
	repositoryformatversion = 0
	filemode = false
	bare = false
	logallrefupdates = true
	symlinks = false
	ignorecase = true
	hideDotFiles = dotGitOnly
[remote "origin"]
	url = ssh://[email protected]:65500/home/git/repositories/web.git
	fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Without this configure, ssh will connect to the host via port 22, which will result in an “Bad file number, fatal: could not read from remote repository” error.

As an alternative, you can append the port specification to ~/.ssh/config as following:

$ cat ~/.ssh/config
#github account
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile /c/Users/[email protected]/.ssh/id_rsa.github
    User git

#ubuntu account
Host 192.168.1.111
    HostName 192.168.1.111
    PreferredAuthentications publickey
    IdentityFile /c/Users/[email protected]/.ssh/id_rsa.ubuntu
    User git
    Port 65500

Others

Local Repositories: Internally supported as Git is designed for distributed development.
GitLab: Project management and code hosting application powered by Ruby on Rails.
GitBucket: The easily installable Github clone powered by Scala.
Github: Build software better, together.

Reference

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Published

23 December 2013

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