Configuring a Git Server Using Git Daemon

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In this module you will learn to use the git server using the git protocol. This will set up the git server in an unauthenticated mode. This is useful perhaps for a public read-only git server or a private departmental git server without access to a public network. You will also learn how to configure both read-write access and how to export repositories globally or selectively.

The demo uses to Rocky Linux 8.10 systems but the basis of the operation is transferable to other Linux systems.

The video is on YouTube

The git repo is here

Working on the Git Server

# On Rocky 1: The Git Server
sudo yum install -y git git-daemon
sudo useradd -m -d /srv/git
# Open interactive shell as the git user
sudo -u git -i
git init --bare example.git
exit
# Create the service unit
sudo systemctl edit --full --force git-server

Define the Service Unit

# In the editor
[Unit]
Description=Git Daemon Service
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/git daemon --export-all --enable=receive-pack --reuseaddr --base-path=/srv/git --verbose
Restart=always
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=git-daemon

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

#Save the file

Start the service and add firewall rule

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now git-server

# Check for port 9418
ss -ntl

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=git
sudo firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent

Working on Git Client

Now move to the Rocky 2 system, you git client. Assuming the git client is installed and the git user.name and email is set

git clone git://172.16.247.160/example
cd example
touch README.md
git add .
git commit -m "First commit"
git push

Selectively Export Repo

Rather than exporting all repos with the option –export-all, you can add a file git-daemon-export-ok to the root level of the repo:

sudo -u git touch /srv/git/example.git/git-daemon-export-ok