OK, I've tried this four ways from Sunday and am looking forward to more ;)

Latest attempts were by following the instructions above:

Currently I have:

    'custom app listening on port' -- ~/webapps/gitosis

    git 1.6.1 installed in ~/webapps/gitosis/bin

    gitosis cloned, installed, path updated, and removed

    public key created per instructions

    'gitosis' and 'repositories' directories created in ~/  following 'gitosis-init < [key]' which seems to be their placement whether run from ~/ (in directions) or from ~/webapps/gitosis

When from local machine I attempt to 'git clone myusername@mydomain.com:gitosis-admin.git', it asks for myusername's password, I provide; it closes with "fatal: 'gitosis-admin.git': unable to chdir or not a git archive"

I'm wondering:

    why 'repositories' is landing in ~/ instead of ~/webapps/gitosis and whether that matters


Oddly enough, I was semi-successful in setting up gitosis in the home directory of a new user I created. In that case, however, I can read and write from my home machine (windohs, at that), but not from a terminal on my webfaction account; same error: 'unable to chdir or not a git archive'

Mercy I beg.

thanks; no errors indicated

dhmorgan wrote:

"...but not via ssh as other user "

What do you mean by that? Every user will have to use "git XXX (Your WebFaction username.)@(Your domain name.):XXX".

dhmorgan wrote:

It seems that the problem has to do with ssh, as I cannot scp to account without typing in password even though I've added keys, changed permissions, etc.

Was the public key added via gitosis? If so that's to be expected because it uses forced commands:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/sshtdg/chapt … html#22858

Otherwise the contents of ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or the permissions of ~, ~/.ssh, or ~/.ssh/authorized_keys are wrong.

I'm still going to test this again. I've just been busy trying to get our git stack ready to be deployed.

I just double checked and the instructions that I posted work:

-bash-3.2$ git clone testweb63@web63.webfaction.com:gitosis-admin.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/testweb63/gitosis-admin/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 5, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
remote: Total 5 (delta 1), reused 5 (delta 1)
Receiving objects: 100% (5/5), 914 bytes, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1/1), done.
-bash-3.2$

conner wrote:

(i'm guessing its some env variable i'm missing along the way..?)

Since you installed git in ~ instead of ~/webapps/gitosis you may need to add "export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH" to your .bashrc.

conner wrote:

If this continues to be impossible to get working, how soon could we expect this 'git stack' to be deployed?

Every time I set a date something comes up and I miss the date so... When it's done.

conner wrote:

I assume that means one-click git deployment on our accounts?

Maybe, but not yet. If we ever create a git app it'll probably just be gitweb until gitosis is more mature.

David,

Thank you for the informative reply and especially for working on the Git stack. Also, I apologize for errors I might be introducing because of my ignorance of ssh.

IAIHMB wrote:

dhmorgan wrote:

"...but not via ssh as other user "

What do you mean by that? Every user will have to use "git XXX (Your WebFaction username.)@(Your domain name.):XXX".

If I open an ssh session, logged in as mywebfactionname@mydomainname, I can clone, push, etc.  But if I attempt to do the same while logged in under a different account, or from home (ie. '[homeuser@homenet ~]$ git clone mywebfactionname@mydomainname:gitosis-admin.git'), it asks for and accepts the password, then fails with "can't chdir or not git repository"

IAIHMB wrote:

dhmorgan wrote:

It seems that the problem has to do with ssh, as I cannot scp to account without typing in password even though I've added keys, changed permissions, etc.

Was the public key added via gitosis? If so that's to be expected because it uses forced commands:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/sshtdg/chapt … html#22858

Otherwise the contents of ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or the permissions of ~, ~/.ssh, or ~/.ssh/authorized_keys are wrong.

I'm still going to test this again. I've just been busy trying to get our git stack ready to be deployed.

I've deleted, recreated, and changed their permissions.

I'm going to review latest postings, try one more time, then file a ticket.

Danny

Success!

Thank you Pygi, David, others. Here's what I did, best as I can recall. Try and reply, we'll get a good set of instructions yet.


here's a good intro tutorial: http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-g … secure-way


create a new ssh/ftp user in webfaction control panel (https://panel.webfaction.com/user_/list); this seems to be because webfaction users don't have control over ssh setup and gitosis has its own ssh needs/expectations that will conflict with yours; 

for remainder of this how-to, the new ssh/ftp user name will be "gitrdone"


start a shell session as yourself

    create a 'dsa' pub key
        (http://forum.webfaction.com/viewtopic.p … 8323#p8323)
   
        cd
        mkdir .ssh
        cd .ssh
        ssh-keygen -t dsa
        [enter] to default filename 'id_dsa'
        [enter] for no passphrase
        [enter] again to confirm
        # see what name@domain is being used
        # mine is wfaccount@web16.webfaction.com
        more id_dsa.pub
        # make copy with name revealed, + '.pub'       
        cp id_dsa.pub [wfaccount@web16.webfaction.com.pub]


start a shell session as 'gitrdone'

    install git and gitosis; I found these good instructions at http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archi … _gito.html

        cd
        mkdir src && cd src

        # Install Python
        wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.1/Python-2.6.1.tgz
        tar zxf Python-2.6.1.tgz
        cd Python-2.6.1
        ./configure --prefix=$HOME
        make
        make install
        cd ..
        export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

        [update: important -- also add the above line to git-user's '.bashrc' file]

        # Install setuptools
        wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
        python ez_setup.py

        # Install Git
        wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.6.1.tar.gz
        tar zxf git-1.6.1.tar.gz
        cd git-1.6.1
        ./configure --prefix=$HOME
        make
        make install
        cd ..

        # Install Gitosis
        git clone git://eagain.net/gitosis.git
        cd gitosis
        python setup.py install

    set up ssh dir and files
        cd
        mkdir .ssh
        cd .ssh
        ssh-keygen -t dsa
        [enter] to default filename 'id_dsa'
        [enter] for no passphrase
        [enter] again to confirm       
        (do not create 'authorized_keys')
        chmod 701 ~/ 
        chmod 700 ~/.ssh
       
    initialize gitosis
        (does not matter which directory you are in; setup will be relative to --prefix=)
        gitosis-init < ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
       
    # don't know why this is set up this way, but...
    chmod 755 ~/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/hooks/post-update
       
    test installation
        (cd to dir to which you'd like to clone; I'll call it 'your-repo')
        git clone gitrdone@yourdomain:gitosis-admin.git
       

    If that worked, return for a moment to your wfaccount session and add your pub key to gitrdone's your-repo/gitosis-admin/keydir; you can see that in keydir there's already one for gitrdone@webNN.webfaction.com     
 
        scp ~/.ssh/wfaccount@webNN.webfaction.com.pub gitrdone@yourdomain:your-repo/gitosis-admin/keydir/


    Now cd to your-repo/gitosis-admin/keydir edit gitosis.conf as desired scie.nti.st article at top is good for this

            at minimum, edit [group gitosis-admin]
                members = gitrdone@webNN.webfaction.com wfaccount@webNN.webfaction.com

                I am preferring   'members = @all' because new users can be added in one step by adding their key to the keydir.
               
        git add, commit, and push from your-repo/gitosis-admin
       
Return to your wfaccount session, try cloning, etc.

Last edited by dhmorgan (2009-01-13 18:08:54)

if gitosis is what you want (multiple secure repositories managed via one ssh account), I'd start with just my instructions because they generally take into account the others

feel free to email me with questions/issues during the process if you don't want to clutter up the discussion before posting your results

hi dhmorgan:
wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
python ez_setup.py

this gives me an error,
error: can't create or remove files in install directory

The following error occurred while trying to add or remove files in the
installation directory:

    [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/test-easy-install-7186.write-test'

The installation directory you specified (via --install-dir, --prefix, or
the distutils default setting) was:

    /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/

Perhaps your account does not have write access to this directory?  If the
installation directory is a system-owned directory, you may need to sign in
as the administrator or "root" account.  If you do not have administrative
access to this machine, you may wish to choose a different installation
directory, preferably one that is listed in your PYTHONPATH environment
variable.

Any idea?

mickeyckm wrote:

hi dhmorgan:
wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
python ez_setup.py

this gives me an error,
error: can't create or remove files in install directory

Any idea?

Yes. The Python that is getting run is the system's 2.4 version. You will want to have your own installation running. If you installed Python and added the PATH export line to the ~./bashrc file, I believe it should run your installed Python instead of the system's.

eric wrote:

I'm trying to follow along at home here and it's still not working. I've followed all these steps exactly, and it's failing at test installation with this:

bash: gitosis-serve: command not found
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

This is odd as gitosis-serve is in the same ~/bin directory as git is, and if git knows where it is I don't see why it can't find gitosis-serve.

Any pointers on this one?

Thanks,
Eric

I'm assuming that is the output from:

    ' git clone gitrdone@yourdomain:gitosis-admin.git '


I'm wondering if the git that's getting run is the one in ~/bin; if you type 'git --version', is it 1.6.1? does the same result occur if you run '~/bin/git clone gitrdone...'?

Last edited by dhmorgan (2009-02-20 09:21:07)

Ok ... I was getting the "fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly" error.... and I seem to have solved it for one operation (a clone) at least!

At the beginning, I looked at the above instructions by dhmorgan, and thought: "I already have python2.6 installed -- why install again?"... So I created a new git user, and setup to install python libraries in /home/git/lib/python2.6 (n.b. at one point I had to "ln -s /home/git/lib/python2.6 /home/git/lib/python2.6/site-packages" to trick setup.py...)

Initial setup seemed successful, and I was able to connect to gitosis-admin remotely etc, but when I tried to create a second repository, I couldn't do it the way http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-g … secure-way recommends; I also couldn't do it by creating a bare one in /home/git/repositories, and then cloning it remotely. I could generate various error messages, all ending in "fatal: The remote end hung up remotely".

After a several hours of hacking away, I noticed that /home/git/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/hooks/post-update looks like:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
gitosis-run-hook post-update
git-update-server-info

so... we need to have the environment set up for /bin/sh, it would seem?

Accordingly, I added in /home/git/.profile

ENV=/home/git/.shinit; export ENV

to get /bin/sh to read .shinit

and set up PATH and PYTHONPATH appropriately in .shinit... (and did alias python=/usr/local/bin/python2.6 ... appropriate for me)

and now... I was able to create another repository and clone it!

Now... its late, and I'm a bit fuzzy on how I got here exactly, but I believe that the "hung up unexpectedly" is because the python path and/or python executable is not the *right* one due to the environment not being right while git is running in your "git" shell account. So mutate the above recipe to fit your situation.

-- Shaun

PS The tentative tone struck at the end is because the login shell is bash, so the script should have the login environment setup... so possibly I fixed something in my .bashrc (I "cleaned it up" while editing the .shinit) so perhaps the rigamarole with .shinit is unnecessary and/or not sufficient. Did I mention its quite late? :) In any case ... check your environment!

Last edited by shaunc (2009-03-17 01:55:38)

gitosis is supposed to look in ~/repositories by default, so I'm not sure why
you need the full path. If you want to try configuring the path, try adding
the following to the [gitosis] section of your gitosis.conf:

  repositories = /home/stevehodgkiss/repositories

I honestly do not know if that will solve the problem, but based on the
documentation available at http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-g … secure-way
that's my best answer