Configuring a git server with gitolite

Setup

You will need:

• git
• git-daemon-run
• ssh
• gitolite

Install everything:

$ apt-get install git ssh gitolite git-daemon-run

Generate a SSH key pair

The server needs a public/private key pair. So, you will need to generate it:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

Now, will copy it to /tmp folder, we will need it there later.

$ cp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub /tmp/local.pub

Setup your git profile

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email your@email.com

Creating the git user:

$ sudo adduser --system --shell /bin/bash --gecos 'git version control' --group --disabled-password --home /home/git git
$ sudo su git
$ echo "PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH" > ~/.bashrc
$ gl-setup /tmp/local.pub

When you run gl-setup command, it will open a file in edit mode.. probably with vim. We don’t need to change anything here right now. Just save and exit (press ESC and type :wq!).

Configuring user access and repositories

Now, go back to the previous user:

$ exit

Go to some folder, e.g., ~/code, and clone the configuration gitolite repository:

$ git clone git@ubuntu:gitolite-admin.git && cd gitolite-admin

Take a look the conf/gitolite.conf file. In this file you will be able to configure groups, users and their access to repositories. By example:

repo foo
	RW+	= local
	R 	= carlos william

In that example, I created a repository called foo, with RW+ access (read and write) for the local user (wich represents the keydir/local.pub public key) and with R access for carlos and william (keydir/carlos.pub and keydir/william.pub).

local, carlos and william are machines with that I copied the public key to the keydir folder (in the gitolite-admin folder), meaning that for every machine you want to give access, you will have to copy their public key.

After doing your changes, commit and push:

$ git add -A
$ git commit -m 'added repo foo'
$ git push origin master

Now, you will be able to clone the foo repo from the configured machines, wich something like:

$ git clone git@SERVER:foo.git

Final thoughts

In this tutorial, I used a ubuntu-12.10-beta2 box, but I believe that it works with older versions too.

If you have any doubt, please share in the comment box above.

Cheers.