This page must be read in full the first time. If you start from some nice looking section in the middle it may not help you unless you're already an expert at ssh.
This page should help you troubleshoot ssh-related problems in installing and accessing gitolite. It also has a section of random ssh-related tips and tricks that gitolite can do.
Before reading this page, it is mandatory to read and completely understand this, which is a very detailed look at how gitolite uses ssh's features on the server side. Don't assume you know all that; if you did, you wouldn't be needing this page either!
This page, and others linked from this, together comprise all the help I can give you in terms of the ssh aspect of using gitolite. If you're installing gitolite, you're a "system admin", like it or not. Ssh is therefore a necessary skill. Please take the time to learn at least enough to get passwordless access working.
Please note that authentication is not really gitolite's job at all. I'd rather spend time on actual gitolite features, code, and documentation than authentication (i.e., ssh, in the common case).
Surprised? This might help explain better.
Your workstation is the client. Your userid on the client does not matter, and it has no relation to your gitolite username.
The server is called server and the "hosting user" is git. If this is an RPM/DEB install, the hosting user is probably called "gitolite", however we will use "git" in this page.
The client has a ~/.ssh
containing a few keypairs. It may also have a
config
file.
The client also has a clone of the "gitolite-admin" repo, which contains a
bunch of *.pub
files in keydir
. We assume this clone is in $HOME
;
if it is not, adjust instructions accordingly when needed.
The git user on the server has a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
file that the
ssh daemon uses to authenticate incoming users. We often call this file
authkeys to save typing, and it always means the one on the server
(we're not interested in this file on the client side).
The server also has a ~/.gitolite/keydir
which contains a bunch of
*.pub
files.
Here's how normal gitolite key handling works:
(On client) pub key changes like adding new ones, deleting old ones, etc.,
are done in the keydir
directory in the gitolite-admin repo clone. Then
the admin git add
s and git commit
s those changes, then git push
es
them to the server.
(On server) a successful push from the client makes git invoke the post-update hook in the gitolite-admin repo. This hook is installed by gitolite, and it does a bunch of things which are quite transparent to the admin, but we'll describe briefly here:
The pubkey files from this push are checked-out into
~/.gitolite/keydir
(and similarly the config files into
~/.gitolite/conf
).
The "compile" script then runs, which uses these files to populate
~/.ssh/authorized_keys
on the server.
The authkeys file may have other, (non-gitolite) keys also. Those
lines are preserved. Gitolite only touches lines that are found
between gitolite's "marker" lines (# gitolite start
and # gitolite end
).
Since I'm pretty sure at least some of you didn't bother to read the "IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ FIRST" section above, let me take a minute to point you there again. Especially the first bullet.
Done? OK, read on...
The following problem(s) indicate that pubkey access is not working at all, so you should start with appendix 1. If that doesn't fix the problem, continue with the other appendices in sequence.
ssh git@server info
asks
you for a password. (Or, if your sshd is set to use keys only, it just
disconnects without doing anything).The following problem(s) indicate that your pubkey is bypassing gitolite and going straight to a shell. You should start with appendix 2 and continue with the rest in sequence. Appendix 5 has some background info.
Running ssh git@server info
gets you the output of the GNU 'info'
command instead of gitolite's version and access info.
Running git clone git@server:repositories/reponame
(note presence of
repositories/
in URL) works.
[A proper gitolite key will only let you git clone git@server:reponame
(note absence of repositories/
)]
You are able to clone repositories but are unable to push changes back
(the error complains about the GL_BINDIR
environment variable not being
set or about not being able to locate Gitolite/Hooks/Update.pm
, and the
hooks/update
failing in some way).
[If you run git remote -v
you will find that your clone URL included the
repositories/
described above!]
Conversely, using the correct syntax, git clone git@server:reponame
(note absence of repositories/
in the URL), gets you
fatal: 'reponame' does not appear to be a git repository
, and yet
you are sure 'reponame' exists, you haven't mis-spelled it, etc.
Since I'm pretty sure at least some of you didn't bother to read the "IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ FIRST" section above, let me take a minute to point you there again. Especially the first bullet.
Done? OK, now the general outline for ssh troubleshooting is this:
Make sure the server's overall setup even allows pubkey based login.
I.e., check that git fetch/clone/ls-remote commands or a plain
ssh git@server info
do NOT ask for a password. If you do get asked for
a password, see appendix 1.
Match client-side pubkeys (~/.ssh/*.pub
) with the server's authkeys
file. To do this, run sshkeys-lint
, which tells you in detail what key
has what access. See appendix 2.
At this point, we know that we have the right key, and that if sshd receives that key, things will work. But we're not done yet. We still need to make sure that this specific key is being offered/sent by the client, instead of the default key. See appendix 3 and appendix 4.
Thanks to an idea from Jesse Keating, a single key can allow both gitolite access and shell access.
(v3.6.1+) There are two ways to do this, both require uncommenting and editing the 'Shell' line in the ENABLE list in the rc file.
If you have only a few users who need to get shell access, edit the line to look like this (note the trailing comma!):
'Shell alice bob',
If you have lots of users, add them to some file accessible to gitolite, (one per line, no extra whitespace), then specify the full path of the file. For example:
"Shell $ENV{HOME}/.gitolite.shell-users",
(Note in this case we have to use double quotes since we are using a variable that needs to be interpolated into the value).
Then run gitolite compile; gitolite trigger POST_COMPILE
or push a dummy
change to the admin repo.
If you're using gitolite v3.6 or below, it's slightly different. You have to enable the trigger by uncommenting the 'Shell' line in the ENABLE list, but you cannot list the users directly on the 'Shell' line in the rc file, nor can you put the file name on that line. Instead, you have to go to the variables section in the rc file and set the SHELL_USERS_LIST variable to the filename. For example:
SHELL_USERS_LIST => "$ENV{HOME}/.gitolite.shell-users",
Then run gitolite compile; gitolite trigger POST_COMPILE
or push a dummy
change to the admin repo.
NOTE: to maintain backward compatibility, this method will continue to work in 3.6.*, but when 3.7 is released (whenever that may be), it will not work, and you will have to use the new syntax described above.
Since a user can have more than one key, it is sometimes useful
to distinguish one key from another. Sshd does not tell you even the
fingerprint of the key that finally matched, so normally all you have is the
GL_USER
env var.
However, if you replace
'ssh-authkeys',
in the ENABLE list with
'ssh-authkeys --key-file-name',
then an extra argument is added after the username in the "command" variable of the authkeys file. That is, instead of this:
command="/home/g3/gitolite/src/gitolite-shell u3",no-port-forwarding,...
you get this:
command="/home/g3/gitolite/src/gitolite-shell u3 keydir/u3.pub",no-port-forwarding,...
You can then write an INPUT trigger to do whatever you need with the file
name, which is in $ARGV[1]
(the second argument). The actual file is
available at $ENV{GL_ADMIN_BASE}/$ARGV[1]
if you need its contents.
don't have ssh-copy-id
? This is broadly what that command does, if you want
to replicate it manually. The input is your pubkey, typically
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
from your client/workstation.
It copies it to the server as some file.
It appends that file to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
on the server
(creating it if it doesn't already exist).
It then makes sure that all these files/directories have go-w perms set (assuming user is "git"):
/home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
/home/git/.ssh
/home/git
[Actually, sshd
requires that even directories above ~
(/
, /home
,
typically) also must be go-w
, but that needs root. And typically
they're already set that way anyway. (Or if they're not, you've got
bigger problems than gitolite install not working!)]
Gitolite accepts public keys only in openssh format. Trying to use an "ssh2" key (used by proprietary SSH software) will not be a happy experience. src/triggers/post-compile/ssh-authkeys can be made to detect non-openssh formats and automatically convert them; patches welcome!
The actual conversion command, if you want to just do it manually for now and be done with it, is:
ssh-keygen -i -f /tmp/ssh2/YourName.pub > /tmp/openssh/YourName.pub
then use the resulting pubkey as you normally would in gitolite.
On windows, I have only used msysgit, and the openssh that comes with it. Over time, I have grown to distrust putty/plink due to the number of people who seem to have trouble when those beasts are involved (I myself have never used them for any kind of git access). If you have unusual ssh problems that just don't seem to have any explanation, try removing all traces of putty/plink, including environment variables, etc., and then try again.
Thankfully, someone contributed this.
NOTE: This section should be useful to anyone trying to get password-less access working. It is not necessarily specific to gitolite, so keep that in mind if the wording feels a little more general than you were expecting.
You have generated a keypair on your workstation (ssh-keygen
) and copied the
public part of it (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
, by default) to the server.
On the server you have appended this file to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
. Or you
ran something, like the gitolite setup
step during a gitolite install, which
should have done that for you.
You now expect to log in without having to type in a password, but when you try, you are being asked for a password.
This is a quick checklist:
Make sure you're being asked for a password and not a pass*phrase*. Do
not confuse or mistake a prompt saying
Enter passphrase for key '/home/sitaram/.ssh/id_rsa':
for a password
prompt from the remote server!
When you create an ssh keypair using ssh-keygen
, you have the option of
protecting it with a passphrase. When you subsequently use that keypair
to access a remote host, your local ssh client needs to unlock the
corresponding private key, and ssh will probably ask for the passphrase
you set when you created the keypair.
You have two choices to avoid this prompt every time you try to use the
private key. The first is to create keypairs without a passphrase (just
hit enter when prompted for one). Be sure to add a passphrase later,
once everything is working, using ssh-keygen -p
.
The second is to use ssh-agent
(or keychain
, which in turn uses
ssh-agent
) or something like that to manage your keys. Other than
discussing one more potential trouble-spot with ssh-agent (see below),
further discussion of ssh-agent/keychain is out of scope of this page.
Ssh is very sensitive to permissions. An extremely conservative setup is given below, but be sure to do this on both the client and the server:
cd $HOME
chmod go-rwx .
chmod -R go-rwx .ssh
Actually, every component of the path to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
all the
way upto the root directory must be at least chmod go-w
. So be sure to
check /
and /home
also.
While you're doing this, make sure the owner and group info for each of
these components are correct. ls -ald ~ ~/.ssh ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
will tell you what they are.
You may also want to check /etc/ssh/sshd_config
to see if the "git" user
is allowed to login at all. For example, if that file contains an
AllowUsers
config entry, then only users mentioned in that line are
allowed to log in!
While you're in there, check that file does NOT have a setting for
AuthorizedKeysFile
. See man sshd_config
for details. This setting is
a show stopper for gitolite to use ssh.
Some OSs/distributions require that the "git" user should have a password and/or not be a locked account. You may want to check that as well.
If your server is running SELinux, and you install gitolite to
/var/gitolite
or another location unsupported by default SELinux
policies, then SELinux will prevent sshd from reading
.ssh/authorized_keys
. Consider installing gitolite to
/var/lib/gitolite
, which is a supported location by default SELinux
policies.
If all that fails, log onto the server as root, cd /var/log
, and look
for a file called auth.log
or secure
or some such name. Look inside
this file for messages matching the approximate time of your last attempt
to login, to see if they tell you what is the problem.
The sshkeys-lint program can be run on the server or the client. Run it with '-h' to get a help message.
On the server you can run gitolite sshkeys-lint
and it will tell you, for
each key in the admin directory's keydir, what access is available. This is
especially good at finding duplicate keys and such.
To run it on the client you have to copy the file src/commands/sshkeys-lint from some gitolite clone, then follow these steps:
Get a copy of ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
from the server and put it in
/tmp/foo
or something.
cd to ~/.ssh
.
Run /path/to/sshkeys-lint *.pub < /tmp/foo
.
Note that it is not trying to log in or anything -- it's just comparing
fingerprints as computed by ssh-keygen -l
.
If the pubkey file you're interested in appears to have the correct access to the server, you're done with this step.
Otherwise you have to rename some keypairs and try again to get the effect you need. Be careful:
Do not just rename the ".pub" file; you will have to rename the corresponding private key also (the one with the same basename but without an extension).
If you're running ssh-agent, you may have to delete (using ssh-add -D
)
and re-add identities for it to pick up the renamed ones correctly.
The admin often has passwordless shell access to git@server
already, and
then used that same key to get access to gitolite (i.e., copied that same
pubkey as YourName.pub and ran gitolite setup
on it).
As a result, the same key appears twice in the authkeys file now, and since the ssh server will always use the first match, the second occurrence (which invokes gitolite) is ignored.
To fix this, you have to use a different keypair for gitolite access. The
best way to do this is to create a new keypair, copy the pubkey to the server
as YourName.pub, then run gitolite setup -pk YourName.pub
on the server.
Remember to adjust your agent identities using ssh-add -D and ssh-add if
you're using ssh-agent, otherwise these new keys may not work.
Make sure the right private key is being offered. Run ssh in very verbose mode and look for the word "Offering", like so:
ssh -vvv user@host pwd 2> >(grep -i offer)
If some keys are being offered, but not the key that was supposed to be
used, you may be using ssh-agent (next bullet). You may also need to
create some host aliases in ~/.ssh/config
(appendix 4).
(ssh-agent issues) If ssh-add -l
responds with either "The agent has no
identities." or "Could not open a connection to your authentication
agent.", then you can skip this bullet.
However, if ssh-add -l
lists any keys at all, then something weird
happens. Due to a quirk in ssh-agent, ssh will now only use one of
those keys, even if you explicitly ask for some other key to be used.
In that case, add the key you want using ssh-add ~/.ssh/YourName
and try
the access again.
(or "making git use the right options for ssh")
The ssh command has several options for non-default items to be specified.
Two common examples are -p
for the port number if it is not 22, and -i
for
the public key file if you do not want to use just ~/.ssh/id_rsa
or such.
Git has two ssh-based URL syntaxes, but neither allows specifying a
non-default public key file. And a port number is only allowed in one of
them. (See man git-clone
for details). Finally, hosts often have to be
referred with IP addresses (such is life), or the name is very long, or hard
to remember.
Using a "host" para in ~/.ssh/config
lets you nicely encapsulate all this
within ssh and give it a short, easy-to-remember, name. Example:
sshconfig
host gitolite
user git
hostname a.long.server.name.or.annoying.IP.address
port 22
identityfile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Now you can simply use the one word gitolite
(which is the host alias we
defined here) and ssh will infer all those details defined under it -- just
say ssh gitolite
and git clone gitolite:reponame
and things will work.
(By the way, the 'port' and 'identityfile' lines are needed only if you have non-default values, although I put them in anyway just to be complete).
If you have more than one pubkey with access to the same server, you must use this method to make git pick up the right key. There is no other way to do this, as far as I know.
A typical example would be if you wanted shell access to the gitolite server using one keypair, and gitolite-mediated access using another. Here's how I do that, where my "id_rsa" keypair has shell access, and my "sitaram" keypair has gitolite access:
```sshconfig host gitolite user git hostname gitolite.mydomain.com port 22 identityfile ~/.ssh/sitaram
host gitolite-sh user git hostname gitolite.mydomain.com port 22 identityfile ~/.ssh/id_rsa ```
Then I would use "ssh gitolite-sh" to get a command line, and use the host alias "gitolite" in git clone and other commands, as well as for gitolite commands (like "ssh gitolite info").
Just to be clear, please note that this assumes the authorized keys file on the gitolite hosting user has my "id_rsa.pub" line, without the gitolite related forced command and options.
When you bypass gitolite, you end up running your normal shell instead of the
special gitolite entry point script gitolite-shell
.
This means commands (like 'info') are interpreted by the shell instead of gitolite.
It also means git operations look for repos in $HOME
.
However, gitolite places all your repos in ~/repositories
, and internally
prefixes this before calling the actual git command you invoked. Thus, the
pathname of the repo that you use on the client is almost never the correct
pathname on the server. (This is by design. Don't argue...)
This means that, you get 2 kinds of errors if you bypass gitolite
When you use git@server:reponame
with a key that bypasses gitolite
(i.e., gets you a shell), this prefixing does not happen, and so the repo
is not found. Neither a clone/fetch nor a push will work.
Conversely, consider git@server:repositories/reponame.git
. The clone
operation will work -- you're using the full Unix path, and so the shell
finds the repo where you said it would be. However, when you push,
gitolite's update hook kicks in, and fails to run because some of the
environment variables it is expecting are not present.