Have you thought about setting up your own private Git server on a spare VPS?

Thanks to the popularity of services like GitHub, Git has become very widespread among the developer community. You don’t have to use a service like GitHub to enjoy the benefits of git. It is open source and available to everyone.

There are a lot of reasons that you might want to run your own git server. Primarily, because many other developers understand it and won’t have to face the learning curve of your version control system to contribute to your project. Let’s go over how to set up git on your VPS.

Prerequisites for Setting Up Git on your VPS

We will be using SSH keys for authentication and we will not use the web interface.

In case you need a web interface to access your repositories, some options for you might be Gitosis, GitList and Goblet.

First, we need to generate a SSH key pair. If you are using Mac or Linux, you can simply issue the following command in a terminal:

> ssh-keygen

If you are using Windows based operating system, there are tools available to generate key pairs, such as PuTTY Gen.

Once we have our keys, we can log into our VPS and create a user specifically for Git. We are going to name it “git”, but feel free to name it whatever you’d like.

Log into your VPS, and gain root privileges with the following command:

> su -

Or if you prefer you can use sudo commands on each of the following. We now need to add the user to handle the repositories:

> useradd git

And then give it a password:

> passwd git

The next step is to install the git server using the following command depending which distro you are using on your VPS:

> yum install git (CentOS/Fedora)

> apt-get install git (Ubuntu/Debian)

We will now need to add the SSH key we previously generated to the git user. We will therefore need to be logged in as the git user. You can easily switch using this command:

> su git

We will now need to upload the public SSH key contained in the “id_rsa.pub” file to your Git user’s home directory. You can easily do that using the following commands from your workstation in case you are using a Mac or Linux based system:

> cd home-dir/.ssh

> scp id_rsa.pub git@VPS-IP-ADDRESS:/home/git/id_rsa.pub

The second command will ask you for the password of the git user we have just created.

If you are on a Windows based system, locate the file and use WinSCP to upload it in the home directory on your VPS.

Once you have done that, we will need to add it to the authorized keys file. To do that use the following commands:

> mkdir ~/.ssh

> touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

> cat ~/id_ras.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys

Remember to always use the >> modifier, because using the single > will overwrite the content of the file, while the double simply appends content at the end of the file.

What if you need to add more keys? Just upload the file as we did earlier and run the last command. Each line in this file is an entry for a key that you wish to have access to this account.

Let’s now set up a local repository. In order to do so we will need to create a folder as an empty git repository using the following command:

> git init --bare new-repo.git

Let’s move on to how to use it with your local computer. On Linux or Mac, you’ll need to change the remote origin to your newly created server.

If you already have a local repo that you want to push to the server, change the remote using this command:

> git remote set-url origin git@VPS-IP-ADDRESS:new-repo.git

If this is a new repository, use this command instead:

> git init && git remote add origin git@ VPS-IP-ADDRESS:new-repo.git

On a windows client you will just need to configure the preferences of your GIT client or add a new repository.

Now you will be able to work knowing that your code is only accessible to yourself!

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Jon Biloh

Owner at LowEndBox

I'm Jon Biloh and I own LowEndBox and LowEndTalk. I've spent my nearly 20 year career in IT building companies and now I'm excited to focus on building and enhancing the LowEndBox and LowEndTalk platform.

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