Setup Git on a remote server

A personal, private Git server on a secure, remote machine

Features

Encrypted read & write to/from the server via SSH
Web interface via gitweb and its functionalities – already installed by web host provider

Machine

Local: Windows 11 & Raspberry Pi 5 (with Raspberry Pi OS Debian 12 Bookworm) local machines
Remote:
Web host provider: Bluehost
- Hosting plan: WordPress Plus Hosting
Hosting platform: cPanel
OS: Red Hat 4.8.5-44

Software used

cPanel Terminal
git (already installed on server by cPanel; on Windows: git, including Git Bash; on Debian: git)
gitweb (already installed on server by cPanel)
Linux utilities (likely already installed): keygen, nano

On local machines (using Git Bash in Windows)

cd # start at user home dir, e.g. /c/Users/junkb
ssh-keygen -o # allow to place keys in default dir; no passkey, i.e. hit enter twice
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub # or whatever name it was given; use PUBLIC key

Then copy contents of the public key file into the clipboard.

On the remote server

touch ~/.ssh/tmp id_ed25519.win1.pub # a temp file to hold key
nano ~/.ssh/tmp id_ed25519.win1.pub

Then paste contents of the public key file; make sure it is all one line, should look something like this:

ssh-ed25519 AAAACTHEQUICKBROWNFOXHELLOTHEREaThISALOOONGSTRINGust junkb@DESKTOP-3ICM930

Add the public key to the authorized_keys file:

cat ~/.ssh/tmp/id_ed25519.win1.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Create a bare repo:

cd ~/git/repos
mkdir project.git # the repo's dir name should end in .git
cd project.git
git init --bare

On a local machine

Push an existing repo to the new repo

An existing repo should first be pushed to the new repo on the server; this is why we add a readme.md file:

mkdir ~/Desktop/temp/myproject
cd ~/Desktop/temp/myproject
git init
touch readme.md # so the repo is not empty
git add .
git commit -m 'hello'
git remote add origin hylownco@hylown.com:git/repos/project.git
git push origin master

Now other users can clone the repo; here we do it in another project on the same Windows machine:

cd ~/Desktop/temp
git clone hylownco@hylown.com:git/repos/project.git

Now we can make changes and push to the server repo:

cd project # this is the name given from the clone of project.git
nano readme.md
# add text
git add .
git commit -m 'changed readme.md in cloned repo'
git push origin master

Now other users can pull these changes; again here we do it in another repo on the same Windows machine:

mkdir ~/Desktop/temp/myproject
cd ~/Desktop/temp/myproject
git init
git remote add origin hylownco@hylown.com:git/repos/project.git
git pull origin master

Note that another format can be used with the SSH protocol:

ssh://hylownco@hylown.com/home3/hylownco/git/repos/project.git

On the remote server

Note: the above works at first; I’m not sure what breaks it, but after making some small changes and trying to push back again, I was getting this:

$ git push origin master
fatal: bad config value for 'receive.denycurrentbranch' in config
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

An internet search of “git ssh bad config value for ‘receive.denycurrentbranch’ in config” led me to:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56990207/fatal-bad-config-value-for-receive-denycurrentbranch-in-config

Following this answer worked for me; git is in exaclty the same location on my server as in this answer, so running this exactly as in the answer on my server worked perfectly:

I also got the same issue. When I run the command git –version it shows 2.24.1 but it wasn’t accepting updateInstead as mentioned in the above question.

I did this to solve this issue:

Run this command.

bash which git

It will give you the path of git.

Example output

bash /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/lib/path-bin/git

Go to ~/.bashrc file and add this code to the bottom of the file

bash export PATH=/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/lib/path-bin:$PATH

*Note that I am not including git at the end of the path.

Hope this solves the issue.

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