Overview

I have two mechanisms set up for accessing my git server. I use gitolite for ssh access and permission management. I also have cgit set up which generates html pages for viewing your repositories and also hosts your repositories over http, or https if you have it set up.

SSH Access with gitolite

Gitolite was a pain in the ass to set up because I didn’t understand umasks before I started trying to set it up. A umask is like the opposite of what you’d enter when running chmod. For example: if I run touch test, I will now have a file with the same permissions as chmod 644. That looks something like this:

$ touch test
$ ls -l
total bla bla
-rw-r--r--  1 loek users 0 Apr 28 12:28 test
$ chmod 644 test
$ ls -l
total bla bla
-rw-r--r--  1 loek users 0 Apr 28 12:28 test
$ # notice the same permissions on the 'test' file

If I want gitolite to create repositories with default permissions so other users can read the repositories, I have to set my umask to the opposite of 644. Here’s a quick explanation of ls -l’s output:

-rw-r--r-- * user group size date time filename
|└┬┘└┬┘└┬┘
| |  |  └all users
| |  └owner group
| └owner user
└type

Each digit in a chmod command sets the permission for the file owner, file group, then everyone. That looks something like this:

$ chmod 644 test

decimal:  6   4   4
binary:   110 100 100
ls -l:  - rw- r-- r--

Then we take the opposite of this to get the umask:

$ chmod 755 directory -R

ls -l:  d rwx r-x r-x
binary:   000 010 010
decimal:  0   2   2

And now my .gitolite.rc:

%RC = (
    UMASK       => 0022,
    ROLES => {
        READERS => 1,
        WRITERS => 1,
    },
    
    ENABLE => [
        'ssh-authkeys',
        'git-config',
        'daemon',
        'gitweb',
    ],
);

1;

HTTP(S) Access with cgit

Cgit is probably the easiest thing to set up. It has great built-in documentation (man 5 cgitrc). Pretty much all configuration is in /etc/cgitrc (css/syntax highlighting isn’t in there). The only reason I’m posting my config here is because for some reason, the order of the options in cgit’s config matters:

#
# cgit config
# see cgitrc(5) for details

cache-size=0
enable-commit-graph=1

css=/cgit.css
logo=/cgit.png

virtual-root=/
remove-suffix=1

root-title=git :tada:

##
## List of common mimetypes
##
mimetype.gif=image/gif
mimetype.html=text/html
mimetype.jpg=image/jpeg
mimetype.jpeg=image/jpeg
mimetype.pdf=application/pdf
mimetype.png=image/png
mimetype.svg=image/svg+xml

# Highlight source code with python pygments-based highlighter
source-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting.py

# Format markdown, restructuredtext, manpages, text files, and html files
# through the right converters
about-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/about-formatting.sh

##
## Search for these files in the root of the default branch of repositories
## for coming up with the about page:
##
readme=:README.md
readme=:readme.md
readme=:README.rst
readme=:readme.rst
readme=:README.txt
readme=:readme.txt
readme=:README
readme=:readme
readme=:INSTALL.md
readme=:install.md
readme=:INSTALL.mkd
readme=:install.mkd
readme=:INSTALL.rst
readme=:install.rst
readme=:INSTALL.html
readme=:install.html
readme=:INSTALL.htm
readme=:install.htm
readme=:INSTALL.txt
readme=:install.txt
readme=:INSTALL
readme=:install

scan-path=/mnt/scf/git/repositories