Tag Archives: ubuntu14.04

Git repository via Apache – Take 3

Posted in Figured Out by

I revisited an old post that I wrote to see how to host my own private git repository with Apache, but I didn’t write any details and made it hard on myself, so I’ll try to fix that here.

My setup

  • Anonymous read access, user/password protected write access
  • Ubuntu 14.04
  • Apache 2.4
  • Git 1.9.1

Step 1. Enable the prerequisite modules.

I had to add symlinks in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled for the rewrite and cgi modules. These are already available with a vanilla install, so look for rewrite.load and cgi.load in the mods-available folder.

In addition, you need to explicitly enable the rewrite module in the virtual host setup in the vanilla apache2 install. I added these lines right under the log defines in sites-enabled/000-default.conf:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteOptions Inherit

Step 2. Set up the git repositories.

I set up all my repositories under /path/to/git, e.g. /path/to/git/project1.git/, etc. The repositories have to be set up in a specific way to enable push. Here’s a script I use:

#!/bin/bash
if [[ $# < 1 ]]; then
    echo Usage: `basename $0` repo-name
    exit 0
fi
cd /path/to/git
if [[ -e ${1}.git ]]; then
    echo ${1}.git exists
    exit 0
fi
mkdir ${1}.git
cd ${1}.git
git init --bare
git config http.receivepack true
git update-server-info
touch git-daemon-export-ok
cd ..
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ${1}.git

Step 3. Set up a users list with htpasswd.

  1. Install apache2-utils
  2. htpasswd -c /path/to/git/users.txt username

Step 4. Set up a git config.

Put this in, say, git.conf under /etc/apache2/confs-available, and 

SetEnv GIT_PROJECT_ROOT /var/www/git
SetEnv GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL
ScriptAlias /git/ /usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend/

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} service=git-upload-pack [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /git-upload-pack$
RewriteRule ^/git/ - [E=AUTHNOTREQUIRED:yes]

<LocationMatch "^/git/">
    Require env AUTHNOTREQUIRED
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Git access"
    AuthUserFile /path/to/git/users.txt
    Require valid-user
</LocationMatch>

Remarks

I spent way too much time on this because of a mismatch between git and apache documentation. Basically, the authorization directives were specific to Apache 2.2 but I was working with Apache 2.4 – see here under runtime configuration changes where they mention that they have a new authorization module mod_authz_host. Also, because I’m not a sysadmin, I didn’t realize that I had to add “RewriteEngine On” so I was scratching my head about why the environment variable was never getting set.

Anyways, I hope the above saves someone some time. I promise not to write any tutorial blogs that only link to documentation without adding anything because, as you can see, reading manuals does not solve problems.