I want to setup a remote git repository on my Raspberry Pi home server. I want to access it from my desktop computer to be able to push code to it. In the next step I will be using git to trigger deploys on my home server, but that will be covered in another article.

Let us se what we have to do!

What steps do we need to take?

• Install Git
• Setup dedicated git user (optional, but recommended)
• Setup SSH
• Add SSH key (optional, but recommended) 🔑
• Try it out and celebrate! 🥳

Install Git and setup dedicated user

The following command will update list of available packages and install git:

sudo apt update 
sudo apt install git -y

Add a new user named git:

sudo adduser git

When running the command you will be asked to set a password and enter some information about the new user. Most fields are optional, so you can just enter whatever you want.

Now to switch to the git user:

sudo su - git

Setup SSH and add SSH key

On the desktop machine we have to generate a SSH key pair. This can be done by running the following command and follow the instructions:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

On you server, when acting as the new user git, create a new .ssh with a file authorized_keys:

mkdir ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Look down permissions so that only the git user have access:

chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Open the authorized_keys file with nano, and add the key from the id_rsa.pub file on your desktop (probably found under C:\Users\YourUsername\.ssh):

nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

If everything is correctly setup you should be able to access your server with the git user using SSH, without any password, from you desktop like this:

ssh git@your-server-hostname-or-ip

And it works form me (and I hope for you too)! 🍺

• Install Git ✅
• Setup dedicated git user (optional, but recommended) ✅
• Setup SSH ✅
• Add SSH key (optional, but recommended) 🔑 ✅

Lets try to create a repo

Now, I would also like to verify that with this setup I am able to work with a repository found on my server on my desktop computer. Let us see how it turns out!

Create a new repo on the server

I will first create a common folder for repositories in the home catalog of the git user:

mkdir -p ~/repos
sudo chown -R git:git ~/repos

After that I add a new folder under repos for my new git repo:

mkdir -p ~/repos/ThisIsProject.git

Go to the new folder and initialize a git repo:

cd ~/repos/ThisIsProject.git
git init --bare

Clone the new repository from the desktop

Form my desktop I can now clone the new repository like this:

git clone git@your-server-hostname-or-ip:/home/git/repos/ThisIsProject.git

When doing this I got the following in my terminal:

Cloning into 'ThisIsProject'...
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.

As another test I added a textfile and pushed it. It all seems to work, so time for celebration! 🎉

• Try it out and celebrate! 🥳 ✅

Thank you for reading!