There are numerous benefits to running your own git server as opposed to Github . Your code cannot be used for profit . Additionally, nobody can delete your code base .

Requirements

1. A computer for your server (running linux preferably debian)
2. An internet connection (pretty hard without one)
3. A second computer with git installed

Setup

The first thing you will have to do is install git via your package manager

If you are using apt

sudo apt install git

On dnf

sudo dnf install git

pacman

sudo pacman -S git

After that create a user called git

sudo useradd git

You will have to enter some information, you can leave everything except the password blank.

Now login to your git user

su git

Now to make our server more secure we are going to use ssh keys.

mkdir .ssh
chmod 700 .ssh/
touch .ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

Now on the computer which you want to commit from you will have to generate a ssh key On your main machine type. My article on keybased auth

ssh-keygen

After that you will have to copy your ssh public key to the authorized_keys

ssh-copy-id user@ip

(To find out your ip you can type ifconfig)

Now if you try to connect to your server you should be able to login without a password.

ssh git@ip

Now you will have to create the folder where all your git repos will be saved.

I will save mine in ~/git , but you can save them wherever you want

mkdir ~/git

Now we have to give the ownership of the git folder to the git user

chown git:git git

Now for every repository you will have to create a folder.

eg.

mkdir ~/git/my_cool_project.git

Now run

cd ~/git/my_cool_project.git

And initiate the git repository

git init --bare

Now you can create a couple of files inside of your project (to test it out).

touch stuff.txt

Now you can test if your repository is working by cloning the files from another machine running git.

git clone git@ip:~/git/my_cool_project.git

You will probably get

warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.

That is because you haven’t committed anything.

git add .
git commit -m "first commit"

Now if you test that again it should work.

GG you did it, you have now successfully set up your own git server

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