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In my previous post I outlined the steps I took to install git and gitolite on the Cubieboard, on top of Cubian X. In this guide I’ll show you what I did to:

• add a new user to my git server
• create a new empty repository
• import my existing repositories from my old Digital Ocean server
• import my GitHub repositories

How to add a new user to gitolite

1. First, clone the gitolite-admin repository on your local machine, if you haven’t done so already:

   git clone git@192.168.0.101:/gitolite-admin gitolite-admin-cubie

2. Inside the gitolite-admin-cubie directory you should have two directories: conf and keys. To add a new user, you basically need to add her key to the keys directory. Note that you can create subdirectories under keys. Let’s assume you want to add a new user, and you have the public key: mary.pub. Note that you will use the corresponding private key to authenticate to git.
   • Copy the two public key to the key folder.
   • Add the key, commit the changes and push to the server:

     git add keys/mary.pub
     git commit -m Add Mary's keys.
     git push origin master
     

Now, user Mary should be able to access the git server using her private key.

How to create a new empty repository and give rights to it

1. Edit conf/gitolite.conf:

   nano conf/gitolite.conf

   Initial file looks something like this:

   repo    gitolite-admin
           RW+     =   john
   
   repo    testing
           RW+     =   @all
   

   To add a new repository “myapp” and give user Mary full access to it, change it to:

   repo    gitolite-admin
           RW+     =   john
   
   repo    testing
           RW+     =   @all
   
   repo    myapp
           RW+     =   mary
   

   If you want user John to have access too, do something like:

   repo    gitolite-admin
           RW+     =   john
   
   repo    testing
           RW+     =   @all
   
   repo    myapp
           RW+     =   mary john
   

   You can read a lot more about the gitolite configuration file here.

2. Add, commit, and push the changes:

   git add conf/gitolite.conf
   git commit -m "Add new myapp repo."
   git push origin master
   

Now Mary can do something like:

git clone git@192.168.0.101:/myapp

to clone the new empty repository.

How to import repositories from another server

1. First, on your local machine, change the gitolite.conf file to add a new empty repository. You will import your existing repository into this new empty one.

   repo    gitolite-admin
           RW+     =   john
   
   repo    testing
           RW+     =   @all
   
   repo    myapp
           RW+     =   mary john
   
   repo    awesome-app
           RW+     =   john
   

2. Add, commit, and push the changes:

   git add conf/gitolite.conf
   git commit -m "Add awesome-app repo."
   git push origin master
   

3. On your Cubieboard, change to user git, change to the repositories folder and you should see the new empty repository awesome-app.git:

   sudo su git
   cd /home/git/repositories
   ls -la
   

4. Change to the awesome-app.git directory and import your code from your remote server:

   cd awesome-app.git
   git --bare fetch git@existing-server.com:/awesome-app.git master:master
   

   This assumes you already have access to your existing git server from the Cubieboard. To set that up you basically need your private key for your existing git server in /home/git/.ssh and you need to edit your /home/git/.ssh/config file adding the following lines:

   Host existing-server.com
       Hostname existing-server.com
       User git
       IdentityFile /home/git/.ssh/existing-server-key
       ServerAliveInterval 300
   

5. On your local machine you can now clone your imported repository, from your Cubieboard:

   git clone git@192.168.0.101:/awesome-app

Importing GitHub repositories

Importing your GitHub repositories is similar to importing repositories from your existing server. You just need to:

1. Make sure you configure GitHub access on your Cubieboard, under user git.
2. On your local machine, add a new empty repository by editing gitolite.conf and pushing the changes to the Cubieboard server.
3. On your Cubieboard, switch to user git, change to the new empty repository and do something like:

   git --bare fetch https://username@github.com/username/repository.git master:master

If you have any questions, feel free to use the comments form below.