2 title: "Git Setup Your Own Server"
3 date: 2021-06-13T12:07:49+02:00
6 excerpt: "I'll show you how to setup your own git server easily"
7 featured_image: "uploads/2018/07/gitout.jpg"
23 I recently decided to move all my code under GIT, I've used it before and I've used also SVN, but I find GIT to be more straightforward in some aspects.
25 In order to use git I needed a place online where to store my projects, and I thought that github could be a good place, but the fact that you have to pay to keep a project private just didn't sound right in my opinion. Of course github is there to make money (specially now that M$ bought it), but I prefer to have a simpler setup and be able to do things my way as much as possible.
27 So I started planning what I wanted my git server to have. Here's a list:
29 * **Security** - I decided to make it work only under ssh, that way only someone who has the key can clone or access the repository. I also added an unprivileged git user that has only access to very few commands, so even if somebody manages to access through ssh he'll find himrself with only very few options available.
30 * **Notifications** - my server already tells me a lot of what happens, so I wanted my git service to do the same. I implemented a mail service that notifies me every time a new repository is added or everytime there's a push to a repository.
31 * **Automation** - I wanted to have less steps possible between creation of the project and deployment to production. Now in two steps I can create a repository and clone it to my local computer, and when I'm done I just need to push my modifications and the code is deployed automatically.
32 * **Visibility** - I haven't yet decided if I want my code to be visible, so I haven't even started thinking about this possibility.
38 Installing a git server is quite simple once you know how it works, on my server it was a matter of having a bare repository setup but in order to have the level of security that I wanted there were a few steps involved.
40 > A bit of a disclaimer here, I use a Slackware64-14.2 on my server and Slackware64-current on my laptop, so all the commands here worked for me but I can't be sure if the procedures that I followed will work on different distros with different setups. If you have any trouble following what I've done let me know in the comments and I'll try to help you.
42 I've added a new user and group to my server but before doing so I added /usr/bin/git-shell to /etc/shells in order to use it as login shell for my git user.
44 {{< highlight bash >}}
45 echo "/usr/bin/git-shell" >> /etc/shells
48 useradd -d /var/git -g git -M -s /usr/bin/git-shell
51 now the user is all set and ready to be used. Next step will be to create the .ssh directory and the authorized_keys file to hold the keys for the developers that have to access the git server. Here's how I did it:
55 touch /var/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
56 chown -R git:git /var/git
57 chmod 0700 /var/git/.ssh
58 chmod 0600 /var/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
61 ok, now the files are in place and the permissions are correct for ssh to work well.
63 Let's head back to my working computer, I created an ssh keypair for my usual user and copied the public key to the authorized_keys file on the server. I won't go into much detail on how to do so, but just a suggestion, keep it without password, it'll be much faster to work later.
65 Since I have ssh access to the same server for my normal user I used the ~/.ssh/config file on my computer to set a new host that will ease my access routine for the git user as well as my regular user, that's my config (more or less):
72 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
77 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/git_rsa
80 Now when I need to access the server with my regular user I'll just run
84 and when I need to access as git user I'll run
88 and ssh will take care of all the options and start the connection with the correct credentials for me. Neat!
90 Now that the access for the git user is setup we have one last thing to do before being able to use it. We'll give him only limited commands to use, That way the git user will be even more limited and much more secure. Inside the documentation shipped with git there's a lot of scripts to get you started with this, so we'll copy them inside a special directory called git-shell-commands, like this:
93 cp -R /usr/doc/git-2.14.4/contrib/git-shell-commands /var/git
94 chown -R git:git /var/git
98 Now we have 2 commands inside the git-shell-commands directory, list and help, the first will show all projects inside the /var/git directory and the other will show a simple help text and a list of all the commands available. Now to give you an example of how easy it is to add commands to the git-shell I will create a simple command that acts as the clear command, it will clean the screen, to do so, from inside the /var/git directory I did:
101 echo $(which clear) > git-shell-commands/clear
102 chmod 0755 git-shell-commands/clear
106 and now I have a "clear" command available for my git user. Another useful command will be "create" to add a repository and a "destroy" to remove it. Let's see them in the next page.
110 Let's focus on the two most important scripts for our git server, the **create** and the **delete** script:
114 {{< highlight bash "linenos=table" >}}
117 # usage: create <PROJECT> - create a git bare repository named PROJECT.git
118 # this command will setup the repo and send a mail for confirmation.
121 MULTIMAIL="/usr/doc/git-2.14.4/contrib/hooks/multimail/git_multimail.py"
127 if "$(git --git-dir="$repodir" rev-parse --is-bare-repository)" = true
135 function git_init() {
137 echo "creating project \"${PROJECT}.git\""
138 if [ ! -d ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git ]; then
139 mkdir ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git
141 cd ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git
144 ln -s $MULTIMAIL custom-hooks/
145 touch hooks/post-receive
146 cat > hooks/post-receive <<EOPR
148 /usr/bin/pee ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git/custom-hooks/deploy.sh \
149 ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git/custom-hooks/git_multimail.py
156 refchangeShowGraph = true
157 mailingList = "receiver@someemail.tld"
158 commitEmailFormat = "html"
161 from = "sender@someemail.tld"
162 administrator = "admin@someemail.tld"
164 logFile = "/var/log/multimail.log"
165 errorLogFile = "/var/log/multimail_err.log"
167 touch custom-hooks/deploy.sh
168 cat > custom-hooks/deploy.sh <<EODP
170 # Directory where to deploy files from repository
172 # Directory containing repository
173 DPGIT_DIR="${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git"
174 # Branch that is going to be deployed to server
177 while read oldrev newrev ref
179 # if DPTARGET is empty we don't want deploy for this project
180 if [[ ! "" == \$DPTARGET ]]; then
181 # let's check that we are deploying to the correct branch
182 if [[ \$ref = refs/heads/\${DPBRANCH} ]]; then
183 echo "Ref \$ref received. Deploying \${DPBRANCH} branch to production..."
184 git --work-tree=\$DPTARGET --git-dir=\$DPGIT_DIR checkout -f $DPBRANCH
185 NOW=\$(date +"%d%m%Y-%H%M")
186 git tag release_\$NOW \$DPBRANCH
187 echo " /==============================="
188 echo " | DEPLOYMENT COMPLETED"
189 echo " | Target branch: \$DPTARGET"
190 echo " | Target folder: \$DPGIT_DIR"
191 echo " | Tag name : release_\$NOW"
192 echo " \=============================="
194 echo "Ref \$ref received. Doing nothing: only the \${DPBRANCH} branch may be deployed on this server."
197 echo "Target directory not declared. Skipping deploy to server."
202 chmod 0755 hooks/post-receive custom-hooks/deploy.sh
204 chown -R ${GITUSER}:${GITGRP} ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git
205 echo "All done, you can now work on \"${PROJECT}.git\""
212 read -p 'Project name: ' PROJECT
215 if [ ! -d ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git ]; then
218 echo "Project directory ${PROJECT}.git already exists."
219 if [ $(ls -A ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git) ]; then
220 if is_bare ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git
222 echo "looks like \"${PROJECT}.git\" is an existing git project directory, choose another name."
225 echo "\"${PROJECT}.git\" is not empty, I can't create a Git Project in it. Choose another name."
229 echo "\"${PROJECT}.git\" is an empty directory. Do you want to initialize a Git Project here? [y/N]"
236 echo "Aborting due to user request."
240 # we assume no as default answer.
241 echo "you said \"$answer\" which I don't understand, so to me is no. Aborting."
249 This is the create script, as you can see it's a bit complex because it will do a few things for me:
251 * create the bare repository using the argument provided on the command line or asking for a project name
252 * check before creating the repo, if another repo with the same name exists or if a directory with files in it exists. That way I'll make sure to only create a repo inside an empty directory.
253 * add a custom-hooks directory that will hold a link to the multimail.py script as well as my deploy.sh script
254 * create a post-receive script that uses **pee** from the [moreutils][1] project to run multiple scripts at the same hook.
255 * ensure sane permissions on the whole project directory.
256 * always assume no (the safest option) when asking the user about the action to take.
258 So after saving this script as create inside the git-shell-commands directory, we'll give it executable permissions and we can move to the delete script.
260 {{< highlight bash >}}
261 cat create-bare-repo.sh > /var/git/git-shell-commands/create
262 chown git:git -R /var/git/git-shell-commands
263 chmod 0755 /var/git/git-shell-commands/create
268 Let's see the delete script:
270 {{< highlight bash "linenos=table" >}}
273 # usage: delete <REPOSITORY> - PERMANENTLY delete a repository if existing.
274 # CAREFUL, this action cannot be undone. This command will ask for confirmation.
280 if "$(git --git-dir="$repodir" rev-parse --is-bare-repository)" = true
291 read -p 'Project to delete: ' PROJECT
294 if [ -d ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git ]; then
295 if [[ $(ls -A ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git) ]]; then
296 if is_bare ${GITDIR}/${PROJECT}.git
298 echo "You are going to delete the git repository \"${PROJECT}.git\" Do you really want to continue? Note, this action cannot be reverted. [y/N]"
302 rm -rf ${PROJECT}.git
305 echo "Aborting due to user request."
309 echo "you said \"$delAnswer\" which I don't understand. Assuming No. Aborting."
314 echo "\"${PROJECT}.git\" doesn't look like a git repository. Check with your System Administrator."
318 echo "\"${PROJECT}.git\" is an empty directory, Skipping. Check with your System Administrator."
324 This script is much simpler than the previous one, it'll accept the name of the project as argument on the command line or will ask for it and will only delete it if it is a proper git repository, otherwise it will just exit with an error code.
326 I improved the way those scripts recognise a git repository from simply relying on the fact that there's a HEAD file inside the directory they're checking, which wasn't the best option, to using git itself to check if the directory is a bare repository. Much better!!
328 Since we are here let's modify the help command to make it show a short description of every available command.
330 {{< highlight bash "linenos=table" >}}
333 # usage: help - Lists all the available commands
334 # help <command> - Detailled explanation of how "command" works
338 HELPTEXT="Hi $USER, Run 'help' for help, 'help <command>' for specific help on a command, run 'exit' to exit. Available commands:"
340 HELPTEXT="Hi $USER, Run 'help' for help, 'help <command>' for specific help on a command. Available commands:"
345 if [[ ! -z $1 ]]; then
347 if [[ -f $cmd && -x $cmd ]]; then
348 awk 'NR>=3&&NR<=4' $cmd | cut -c 3-
350 echo "command \"$cmd\" doesn't exists"
358 *) [ -f "$cmd" ] && [ -x "$cmd" ] && echo "$cmd" ;;
364 The main thing I added is the support for a command line argument, now I'm able to run it by itself and display the usual output with a list of available commands, or followed by a command name to give a brief explanation like this:
366 {{< highlight bash >}}
368 Hi git, Run 'help' for help, 'help <command>' for specific help on a command, run 'exit' to exit. Available commands:
374 usage: create - create a git bare repository named PROJECT.git
375 this command will setup the repo and send a mail for confirmation.
379 Pretty nice isn't it?! Now it's much more user friendly, and to show the description I used awk and cut to parse the comment at the top of every script I have in the `git-shell-commands` directory.
381 In the next page we'll see the usual routine I follow when working with this new setup.
387 Let's say I had a new idea for a WordPress plugin, I can't wait to start writing, so the setup of the GIT environment should be as fast as possible. That's where my setup will come in handy. Let's open the terminal, I'll go inside my testing directory and from there I'll run:
389 {{< highlight bash >}}ssh git_ssh 'create awesomePlugin'
390 creating project "awesomePlugin.git"
391 Initialized empty Git repository in /var/git/awesomePlugin.git/
392 All done, you can now work on "awesomePlugin.git"
395 The project is created, now I just need to clone it
397 {{< highlight bash >}}git clone ssh://git_ssh:/var/git/awesomePLugin.git
398 Cloning into 'awesomePlugin'...
399 warning: Looks like you cloned an empty repository.
402 And that's it, I now have a local and a remote copy of my git repository ready to work with.
404 Let's say I'm working on this plugin and I get to the point where I feel like I can use it on my own blog, I want the deploy to be as fast as the rest of the process was, so I'll ssh as my normal user and modify the `deploy.sh` script inside the `custom-hooks` directory for this project to add the working directory and the branch I want to use for deploy (you can use master, but it's better to use a different branch only for this pourpose, this way you can keep the production code stable and use master for experimenting until ready to deploy)
406 Inside the deploy.sh script I'll edit those 2 lines:
408 {{< highlight bash >}}# Directory where to deploy files from repository
410 # Branch that is going to be deployed to server
414 adding `/var/www/wp-content/plugins/awesomePlugin` as `DPTARGET` and production as `DPBRANCH`.
416 now on my local system I'll add a new branch and use that before committing my stable code.
418 {{< highlight bash >}}git checkout -b production
419 Switched to a new branch 'production'
423 git commit -m "awesomePlugin is even more awesome"
424 [production (root-commit) a3885a4] awesomePlugin is even more awesome
425 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
426 create mode 100644 awesomePlugin.php
428 git push origin production
429 Counting objects: 3, done.
430 Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 240 bytes | 240.00 KiB/s, done.
431 Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
432 remote: Ref refs/heads/production received. Deploying production branch to production...
433 remote: /===============================
434 remote: | DEPLOYMENT COMPLETED
435 remote: | Target branch: /var/www/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/awesomePlugin
436 remote: | Target folder: /var/git/awesomePlugin.git
437 remote: | Tag name : release_12072018-1110
438 remote: \==============================
439 To ssh://git_ssh:/var/git/awesomePlugin.git
440 * [new branch] production -> production
443 And that's it, now my new plugin is ready to go live as soon as I activate it inside my WordPress admin area.
447 That's it for now, I'll add to this post as soon as I decide whether I want my code to be visible or not, but for now this is my setup and it's working greatly for me so far.
449 If you made it this far I hope you'll spend a couple more minutes to let me know what you think about this setup, if you use something similar or if you had any problems setting this up, I'll try and help you as much as I can of course.
451 [1]: https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/