Git and gitolite

We are using git to manage our software projects. To help manage the multi-user controll access on our class server I am using gitolite. The user running gitolite is git, and so all remote git transactions will use a url starting with git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu: what you put after the : will determine which repository you are accessing. You will often see a trailing .git in repo URLS. This is a convention used to indicate a server-based “bare” repository: one without a working directory. If you leave the .git off of the URL everything will stil work, but it’s good to keep it there just to follow convention. It is important to remember that while .git is part of the URL, it is not part of a repository’s name. The repository named rflowers/iotest will have path component rflowers/iotest.git. This is important in the few cases where you need to refer to repository by name, not by URL, for instance when using the fork command.

Note: In the reference paths below always replace USER with the username you set when copying your public key to the server. In most cases this is the same as your CVL account user name.

Helpful Settings

Since we do an aweful lot of typing git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu it will be useful to add some lines to our .ssh/config file so that we can type less.

Host ece2524
    HostName ece2524.ece.vt.edu
    User git
    ForwardAgent yes

Make sure to set appropriate permissions on the config file or else ssh will complain:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

This names our host ece2524 and uses a default user of git, so now all of the git clone and fork commands can be shortened. For instance, to fork the skel/redir repository to rflowers/redir:

ssh ece2524 fork skel/redir rflowers/redir

and to clone the newly created fork

git clone ece2524:rflowers/redir

Of course, replace rflowers with your own username (and be aware if you ahve already forked the skel/redir repository you will get an error message stating that the destination repository already exists if you try running the fork command again).

You can still ssh into your shell account with your cvl user name

ssh your_cvl_user@ece2524

If you want to use your ssh keys for shell account authentication as well the run the command

ssh-copy-id your_cvl_user@ece2524.ece.vt.edu

After that, if all goes well

Troubleshooting

• asked for the git password

if you are ever asked for the ‘git’ password it means something is wrong with your ssh key (this is the file that was created when you ran ssh-keygen). The three most common problems are

1. you created your key locally and are now trying to run git comands while connected to the ece2524 server (or the reverse scenario).
2. you overwrote or remade your keys (for instance, you reinstalled your system, or created a new virtual machine, and had to run ssh-keygen again) but haven’t copied the new keys to the server
3. you are using multiple machines (maybe a laptop and a desktop, or a real machine and a virtual machine), created ssh keys on both but only installed one on the server, or attempted to install both but when installing one inadvertently overwrote the other.

Solutions:

1. check that you are running your git commands from the same system as the one you created your keys on. If you run ‘ls /.ssh' you should see at least two files there, ~id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. See Working with SSH Keys.
2. If you had to recreate your keys for some reason you will have to be sure to copy the new ones to the server. See “Install Your Key” at Working with SSH Keys.
3. If you are working from multiple machines reinstall your keys from each of them being sure to follow the instructions for “Advanced Users: Multiple Keys” at Working with SSH Keys.

iotest

• path: USER/iotest.git
• results: result/USER/iotest.git

fdtest

• skeleton repo: skel/fdtest
• fork command: ssh git@ece2524.ece.vt.edu fork skel/fdtest USER/fdtest
• user repo path: USER/fdtest.git
• results repo: results/USER/fdtest.git