Gitosis

Christian Külker

0.1.1

2024-02-28

Introduction

This old document from 2011 describes gitosis, software to manage and deploy git repositories. It provides an easy and stable model to access git repositories for teams using a shared server. As of Debian 7.x (Wheezy), gitosis has been replaced by Gitolite. Therefore, this document will most likely not receive substantial updates and is for historical purpose only.

Manual Installation [0.1.0]

It is relatively easy to manually install gitosis. This installation will install it to /home/srv (user data) to /srv (short path). It uses two computers: (a) server and (b) client.

# On the server as root:
rmdir /srv
mkdir /home/srv
ln -s /home/srv /srv

aptitude install gitosis

Make sure this user exists

id gitosis
uid=104(gitosis) gid=107(gitosis) groups=107(gitosis)

The most important locations are:

/home/srv/gitosis
/home/srv/gitosis/git
/usr/bin/gitosis-init
/usr/bin/gitosis-run-hook
/usr/bin/gitosis-serve

For the initial setup, we need one SSH key. You can use the key of your current user on the client.

# on the client
cd
scp .ssh/id_rsa.pub rep:/tmp

You need to be root first, and then change to the user gitosis

# As root on the server:
mkdir /srv/gitosis   # sometimes
su - gitosis
gitosis-init < /tmp/id_rsa.pub
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/srv/gitosis/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/
Reinitialized existing Git repository in /home/srv/gitosis/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/

On the client

git clone gitosis@rep.example.com:gitosis-admin.git

Then, you edit the gitosis-admin repository on your client.

Creating a New Repository [0.1.0]

This will create the repository vwtg on m.example.com.

export REP=vwtg
mkdir $REP
cd $REP
git init
echo "gitosis@m.example.com:$REP.git" >| REP
git add REP
git commit -m init REP
git remote add origin gitosis@m.example.com:$REP.git
git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master
git push origin master:refs/heads/master
git pull

Adding Access For A New Client

The access to gitosis is based on public SSH keys.

  1. Add pub key to keydir

  2. Name it after the login and machine name, usually domain name, for example user@machine2.pub

  3. Add that string user@machine2 to the ‘members’ section like so:

    members =

Configuring and Using the Git Repository

This example creates the repository hpc-benchmark-suite and assign it to the group hpc-sw-dev inside the configuration in the first step and then in the second step it actually created the repository. In a third step it adds configuration to the repository.

  1. Add configuration to gitosis.conf
  [repro hpc-benchmark-suite]
  description = Aurora Benchmark Suite
  owner = user_id

  [group hpc-sw-dev]
  writable = hpc-benchmark-suite
  members = user_id
  1. Create locally a git repository
  mkdir hpc-benchmark-suite
  cd hpc-benchmark-suite
  git init
  touch README
  git add README
  git commit -m init README
  1. Add a remote origin
  git remote add origin gitosis@rep.example.com:hpc-benchmark-suite.git
  #git remote add origin gitosis@m.example.com:nagios.git

Or

  git remote add origin gitosis@m:hpc-benchmark-suite.git

If you already have a remote origin, edit .git/config

Then push something

    git push origin master:refs/heads/master

To pull we need to update the configuration

    git config branch.master.remote origin
    git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

Global Access [0.1.0]

In addition to the usual restricted access, it is possible to give access to a given repository to all.

# As root or gitosis user (depending on access rights)
cd /srv/gitosis/repositories/hpc-benchmark-suite.git
touch git-daemon-export-ok
/usr/lib/git-core/git-daemon --base-path=/srv/gitosis/repositories/

Global access is then possible for some directories as:

git clone rep.example.com:hpc-benchmark-suite.git

However it is still possible to access it as a specific user.

git clone gitosis@rep.example.com:hpc-benchmark-suite.git

Access to GitWeb [0.1.0]

Installation

aptitude install gitweb

Edit /etc/gitweb.conf

sed -ie 's%/var/cache/git%/srv/gitosis/repositories%' /etc/gitweb.conf
echo '$export_ok = "git-daemon-export-ok";' >> /etc/gitweb.conf
    [gitosis]
    gitweb = yes

Then go to the directory of the project you want to be visible in gitWeb

cd /srv/gitosis/repositories/hpc-benchmark-suite.git
touch git-daemon-export-ok

Finally start the GitWeb daemon as gitosis user

/usr/lib/git-core/git-daemon --base-path=/srv/gitosis/repositories/

Go to the URL and verify: http://rep/gitWeb/

There is a known problem, that the started daemon vanishes from the process list and/or the file /srv/gitosis/repositories/<REPO>.git/git-daemon-export-ok gets removed (and the daemon stops).

To mitigate this a daemon = yes and gitWeb = yes line has to added to gitosis.conf for that repository.

daemon = yes
gitweb = yes

Rename a gitosis Repository [0.1.0]

The rename a gitosis repository the order of actions is important.

Before

[group main]
writable = nagios

After

[group main]
writable = nagios3

Push changes

git push origin master

Connect to the gitosis server and rename the correct folder

cd /home/srv/gitosis/repositories
mv nagios nagios3

Change the remote reference in all repository clones

cd /srv
mv nagios nagios3
cd nagios3
git remote rm origin
git remote add origin gitosis@m:nagios3.git
git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

Remove a Repository [0.1.0]

The order of actions to remove an existing repository is important. This example uses the git repository sai and changes need to be done in gitosis.conf. Remove all sai entries, as gitosis admin user, and then as root.

As the last step remove the repository.

cd /srv/gitosis/repositories
rm -rf sai.git

Use A Git Hook [0.1.0]

To execute an action for every change on the server, add a git hook inside the repository.

cd /srv/gitosis/repositories/christian.git/hooks
vim post-receive
#!/bin/bash
unset $(git rev-parse --local-env-vars)
DATE=`date +'%FT%T'`
echo $DATE >/tmp/git-hook.log

History

Version Date Notes
0.1.1 2024-02-28 Release to GitHub, update Markdown formatting
0.1.0 2011-07-14 Initial release
  • Gitosis