Git save password of remote connection locally, connecting via root# - linux

I would just like to start by saying I am completely new to git so I am probably doing things the wrong way but am trying to follow posts on here and guides online. I know this is probably a dumb post, but I am just a web designer so very basic with this stuff, would appreciate any advice about the way I am doing this, or if there is a better way.
I installed git on my centos vps and then setup my repository inside my website, location here:
/var/www/vhosts/server.userfarmer.com/userfarmer/userfarmer.git
The userfarmer folder before the .git folder is my main websites directory, I am trying to upload my website from my local machines via git to this folder. I set this up over ssh using:
mkdir userfarmer.git
cd userfarmer.git
git --bare init
I have then setup the git remote connection locally using:
git remote add origin root#serverip:/var/www/vhosts/server.userfarmer.com/userfarmer/userfarmer.git
now I can connect to this fine but each time I do I require my root password, is there anyway to save this so it is not needed each time I do a push.
Any advice greatly appreciated, this is all completly new to me,
Thanks,
Simon

On your server create a .ssh folder at root user home directory.
mkdir /root/.ssh/
Give it 700 permission.
chmod 7000 /root/.ssh/
Create a file named "authorized_keys" inside the .ssh folder and give it permission 600
touch /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 /root.ssh/authorized_keys
Now from your laptop:
Append your public key i.e loptop.pub content to authorized_keys.
cat ~/.ssh/laptop.pub | ssh root#serverip "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

you can open the file
.git/config
look for line
url=root#serverip:/var/www/vhosts/server.userfarmer.com/userfarmer/userfarmer.git
and add your password in format:
url=root:password#serverip:/var/www/vhosts/server.userfarmer.com/userfarmer/userfarmer.git
next time you open a repo, add it by writing
git remote add origin root:password#serverip:/var/www/vhosts/server.userfarmer.com/userfarmer/userfarmer.git

Related

What permissions settings does push-to-deploy require?

The title is general, but I have more specific questions. I am deep in a permissions nightmare trying to set up a "push-to-deploy" system using Git.
From my local machine, I push by SSH to the server (Ubuntu 14.04). I have the server set up as the remote
git remote add development devuser#development.server:/home/dummyuser/bare/repo.git
This bare repository is within the home folder of a dummy user dummyuser that we use to handle deployment tasks. devuser is my own account on the development server.
I have a post-receive hook set up within the remote repository (development.server:/home/dummyuser/bare/repo.git/hooks/post-receive) that's intended to deploy files via git checkout to a web server directory on the same server, call it webfolder/. That folder currently has permissions
drwxr-xr-x dummyuser www-data webfolder/
where www-data is the group associated with the Apache user.
If I have the post-receive hook script use the command
git --work-tree=/var/www/webfolder --git-dir=/home/dummyuser/bare/repo.git checkout -f
I get errors that it can't write to webfolder/, which is predictable since I assume the script is running as me (devuser) since I did the instigating push via SSH, and devuser doesn't have any permissions on webfolder/.
However, if I change the script to act as dummyuser,
sudo -u dummyuser git --work-tree=/var/www/webfolder --git-dir=/home/dummyuser/bare/repo.git checkout -f
just to see what happens, I have the error
warning: unable to access '/home/devuser/.config/git/attributes': Permission denied
There's a couple of things I don't understand about this:
1) Neither /home/devuser/.config/ nor /home/dummyuser/.config/ exist. That's fine, but if Git needs to access a .config/ folder, why wasn't it complaining before when I was setting up bare repos and executing hooks as devuser?
2) Now that I'm trying to act as dummyuser, why is Git looking in ~devuser/ for a .config/ folder? Why isn't it looking in ~dummyuser/?
I've been working on this tiny slice of one single problem in the maddening shitshow that is "using Git" for coming up on four hours now, and my brain is fuzzy, so please use small words.
The problem is something involving sudo -u dummyuser not setting the environment variables that Git expects. If I add HOME=/home/dummyuser to the post-receive hook, the deployment works as expected.
If anyone can provide more details about what's happening or a better solution, write it as an answer and I'll accept it. Couple of notes:
dummyuser doesn't have a login, so using sudo -iu dummyuser in the post-receive script won't work
After setting HOME=/home/dummyuser manually and successfully executing the script, I find that echo $HOME from the terminal returns /home/devuser, so there's no permanent change to $HOME
After successfully executing the hook script, neither ~devuser/ nor ~dummyuser/ nor /root/ have a .config/ folder. So... I still have no idea why Git was hung up on it.
Git expects a .config folder in the user's home directory. If $HOME isn't set correctly, e.g. if it points to a different user's home, Git will try to access $HOME/.config, not knowing that it actually doesn't even exist. However, since the user, and thus Git, doesn't have access to that $HOME, you will receive an error saying Permission denied.
To test that, try to run as dummyuser:
[ -d /home/devuser/.config ] && echo '.config exists!'
You're trying to test if the directory /home/devuser/.config exists. However, since you don't have the needed permissions, you get Permission denied, and you still don't know whether the directory exists or not.
Instead of setting $HOME manually, you could possibly use -H or --set-home:
sudo -Hu dummyuser git --work-tree=/var/www/webfolder --git-dir=/home/dummyuser/bare/repo.git checkout -f

Git remote pull using GitHub deployment keys - Permission Denied

I have done the following steps to setup ssh deployment keys with our git repo for it to be able to git pull without a username and password:
Note: I am on AWS EC2 / Ubuntu 14.04.3
Run ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "ownersEmail#gmail.com" these are then saved as id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in ~/.ssh/
The deployment public key (id_rsa.pub) is added on the GitHub online UI in the deployment keys section
The directory is already cloned in /var/www/ directory, this is working all good via HTTPS for pulling
Try sudo git pull git#github.com:ownersUsername/OurRepo.git and get the following error
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Another Note: This repository is private under another users account.
Also, when I try ssh git#github.com I get:
Hi userName/Repo! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
Connection to github.com closed.
And the deployment key comes up as being used. Have been on this issue for greater than 4 hours now and any would would be very much appreciated, thanks.
The problem is you're using sudo, which runs the command as root, and it will try to use the root's keys not your user's keys.
What you want to do is:
give your user/group write access to /var/www
run the pull/clone as the user, not the root user.
When you do a git pull you don't need the link.
git pull <remote> <branch>
You need the full url for the clone command
sudo git clone git#github.com:ownersUsername/OurRepo.git
To test if your ssh key is good use this:
git fetch --all --prune

Git push to cPanel account - Push did not update modified file

SOLUTION BELOW - How to use git to push to cpanel server
I finally got somewhere with setting up Git between my localhost (WAMP setup on Windows 8.1) and my Linux server (CentOS 6.6 x64 with cPanel 11.46.2).
Locally I created a bare clone: git clone --bare my_project my_project.git
NOTE: my_project is an example name, not the real name, and from this doc here: http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server
I copied the my_project.git folder to my server's root directory /home/myuser/public_html/
so now in the root directory I have:
cgi-bin
my_project.git
This is one area I am unsure of. Do I have to do an init (using putty) on my server in the public_html directory? I read something about a bare init? I just want to push (from my PC) the website I already have under Git control, to the server. When I make a change to 1 file, push that change to the server so it's updated live with a push. The website is DONE and ready to be live. I have already manually moved back and forth for live testing on the server. My last step is to get the Git setup correctly, so any further changes I can just push them to the server without the need of FTP.
I added a remote origin: git remote add origin ssh://myuser#thedomain.com/home/myuser/public_html/my_project.git
I tried to push to it, and got "Permission denied (publickey)". I already had an id_rsa and id_rsa.pub key locally on my PC, so I copied them and renamed them to id_rsa.myname id_rsa.myname.pub (where myname is my first name). I then copied them to the .ssh folder through FTP (FTP as cpanel user, and it's the directory your dumped into, above public_html), same as /home/myuser/.ssh/ directory.
Once they where there, I added them to 'authorized_keys' using Putty logged in as the cpanel user (my private ppk) by doing:
cd .ssh
cat id_rsa.myname >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
cat id_rsa.myname.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
After doing that, a push appeared to work. Because I was having a key/auth issue, I used Git Gui version, which was setup and worked fine locally. I added the origins through Git Bash though. When I did "Remote > Push" in the Gui version, I got:
Pushing to ssh://theregistrybank#theregistrybank.com/home/theregistrybank/public_html/yiire gistrybank.git
stdin: is not a tty
To ssh://myuser#thedomain.com/home/myuser/public_html/my_project.git
44ae034..0388a05 master -> master
updating local tracking ref 'refs/remotes/origin/master'
Before doing the push, the only file modified (diff from the bare clone I transferred to the server) was my .gitignore file. I added 2 more exclusions to it, and committed it locally. So I was trying to push the change in that file. After I did the push, it said "success" in green and appeared to work. However, when I check the file in FileZilla, the .gitignore file is not the updated one that I just committed locally.
I think I am close, but missed a step somewhere. I tried to be as descriptive as possible.
And putting the source on GitHub is not an option as the client does not want the source public, and does not want to pay for the private repos. I should be able to push from my local setup to the cPanel server so I don't have to transfer thousands of files every time. I actually transfer a zip file, and unzip on the server lol.
Server Info
cPanel 11.46.2 build 0
CentOS 6.6 x86_64 kvm build01
Yes, Git is setup on the server, and working, and git --version reports:git version 1.7.1
Git on my PC: git version 1.9.4.msysgit.2
Thank you in advance.
SOLUTION
Thanks to #VonC I was able to get this to work :)
You need somewhere for your git repo to sit. I created a 'git-repos' folder in '/home/cpaneluser/git-repos' to house my repos for this cpanel user.
First step is to create a bare repo: http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server - I only followed the first step, basically created the bare repo 'my-project.git'
Before putting it on your server, rename 'my-project.git/hooks/post-receive.sample' to just 'post-receive' so it will be ran. Edit it with your editor, and add the line that #VonC gave us in his chosen answer:
#!/bin/sh
umask 0022
GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/cpaneluser/public_html GIT_DIR=/home/cpaneluser/git-repos/my-project.git git checkout -f
Note: I am using cpanel, so your path's may be different, and your umask could be different. 0022 is for 0644 file permissions. Without the umask, I was getting 500 Internal Server Errors, because the files were created with 0664 permissions instead.
Using FTP or whatever you like, copy the 'my-project.git' bare repo to your server to '/home/cpaneluser/git-repos'. Then go into 'my-project.git/hooks' and change the permissions of post-receive to have execute permissions. For me, 0744 worked fine. This was the magic sauce :)
Locally, add your remote (must be in your git project): git remote set-url origin ssh://cpaneluser#yourdomain.com/home/cpaneluser/git-repos/my-project.git
Now if you try to push now, it won't put the files in 'public_html' because the git tree (terminology?) matches and is up to date. If they are up to date, it seems to skip over executing your 'post-receive' hook. That means your bash script never ran, and it never checked out the files to your working tree.
We need to manually run the 'post-receive' bash script to create all the files of our project in the 'public_html' directory.
cd to '/home/cpaneluser/git-repos/my-project.git/hooks'
Run: ./post-receive
Boom, all your files are in 'public_html'. Now you can work locally, then push to your cpanel server as expected :)
I had a similar problem with my cPanel account, git was set up but for some reason I couldn't push to it. After a lot of head-banging I realized that the root of the problem is like you pointed out that although git is set up, the repo is empty so there's nothing for it to track.
This happens when you set up an empty repo in cPanel and then try pushing a local repo that you've already created, as opposed to cloning it first from github or your local repo (which is what happened to me because for some reason I couldn't access my github from the cPanel git interface even though I had set up a SSH key)
The simple solution that I found is to manually clone the repo using the terminal in your cPanel account
On your cPanel dashboard, under the "advanced" section, you'll find the terminal. You'll get a warning saying that you could mess up your server if you don't know what you're doing, click ok and you're in.
Now you just have to clone your repo the same way you would if you're cloning onto a local machine.
Navigate to where git was set up in your cPanel
cd repositories/<nameOfYourRepo>
And run the clone command
git clone <URLofYourGithubReop>
You'll be asked for your github username and password if it's a private repository
And that's it, you're good to go
What you have copied (my_project.git) is a bare repo, meaning one without a working tree (the actual checked out files).
Read for instance "Git workflow - Setting up a build process".
That means pushing to if won't change anything in /home/myuser/public_html/
The missing piece is a post-receive hook (in /home/myuser/public_html/my_project.git/hooks/post-receive, make sure it is executable: chmod +x), in order to checkout the repo in /home/myuser/public_html/.
#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/myuser/public_html GIT_DIR=/home/myuser/public_html/my_project.git git checkout -f

Deploying git repo to "production" server

I have a git repo where a group of developers and I are collaborating on project code. occasionally, we'd like to copy the git repo to a VPS (setup as Linux server) that has an external IP address (w.x.y.z).
I can go into an SFTP client and navigate up the folder hierarchy to the server root and then navigate down to /var/www/ (server web root) to drop my files in but I'd like to deploy to the server through the command line instead.
My goal is to configure the Linux server as a remote git directory but don't know how to go about navigating up the file hierarchy to have git recognize that the remote branch repo needs to go into /var/www/.
Brief search has uncovered git remote add origin username#w.x.y.z then use git push origin.
It seems that connecting this way to w.x.y.z will land me at the home folder of 'username', not the root web directory (/var/www/) when accessed via the browser.
Does anyone have insight into how I should go about setting up a remote directory for deploying a git repo to a "production" server?
You appear to be doing this a rather non-obvious way. I think what you want to do is copy the git repo to somewhere else (the vps server). The standard way to achieve this is git clone.
In your /var/www/ directory or an appropriate subdirectory thereof, do:
git clone [URL-FROM-GITHUB]
That will clone the git repository to your VPS. You can then update it with
git pull
could script this with
ssh my.vps.server 'cd /var/www/whatever && git pull'
However, normally you don't want the entire project in '/var/www/...' because that would also put stuff you did not mean to deploy there, e.g. the .git directory. Hence perhaps better to clone the repo within your home directory, and make a small script to rsync the appropriate /var/www/ directory against your repo, using --exclude to remove files you don't want, or just rsync-ing a subdirectory of the repo.

Deploy with git pull on webserver on /var/www/vhosts

Can I create with git files owned by root without using root to push?
I use git user to push on the webserver. But /var/www is owned by root or www-data with no write access for other user.
I can pull in an other directory and use "hook/post-receive" but still this hook is executed with the git user...
For the moment I log in the webserver and do a sudo git pull origin. But it will be more efficient if I was hable to do a git pull server from my laptop.
Thanks
Just putting my comment here as answer, since as far as I know, it will completely fix the problem:
Make a symlink in /var/www to a map owned by the git user (e.g. /home/git/www). Then push your files to this /home/git/www map. No problems with permissions anymore.
My solution was to give all files to git by way of the www-pub group with read permission for everyone—except settings files with the MySQL password.
I push to /home/git/repository/project and checkout to /var/www/project using hook/post-receive.

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