Setting up Git on WebFaction

I recently setup some web hosting with WebFaction for a client. While developing the website locally I have been using git as my version control system, because I’m hip and trendy.

Since my development machine is a laptop (and often behind a NAT router), it would be easier for me to push to the server rather than pulling them since the server’s details will remain constant while mine are likely to change frequently. While merely setting up git on WebFaction is simple, there are a couple of gotchas if you wish to be able to push to the server.

While I have tried to make each step as clear as possible, I realise that I’m not very good at making clear instructions. This is not a git tutorial either so it may perhaps be a bit confusing to those with no prior experience of using it.

Installing Git

• Login to your server via SSH
• Download and install git (check the git website to make sure you’re downloading the latest version):

  $ wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.6.3.3.tar.gz
  $ tar zxf git-1.6.3.3.tar.gz
  $ cd git-1.6.3.3
  $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME && make && make install

Setup the remote repository

With git installed on the server, it’s now time to setup the remote repository. Usually when you want to initialise a repository git init would suffice. Unfortunately that won’t do here. Thankfully, it’s not too difficult if you follow these steps.

• Create a folder for your repository. I tend to have a repo folder in my home directory which contains a folder for each project:

  $ mkdir ~/repo/projectname.git

  The .git suffix is just a style thing and not required.

• cd into this newly created directory and initialise the remote repository like so:

  $ git --bare init

  Those of you with prior git experience may wonder what the --bare is for. This tells git that we don’t need copies of the committed files on the filesystem, just the repository itself. Apologies for the rather vague description but it should become clear later on.

Configuring the local repository

After working on the server configuration, it’s now time to do a little work on your local machine. At the moment, your local git repository doesn’t know where to push the files to. This will soon change!

• $ cd /path/to/your/local/repository/
  $ git remote add origin user@server-ip-or-address:~/repo/projectname.git

  Of course, make sure to substitute the italic phrases for your own details

Now that your local repo has a reference to the remote one, it’s time to give this pushing malarky a try!

• $ git push origin master

• You’ll be prompted for your ssh password but after that everything should be hunky dory. Let’s look at the output:

  $ bash: git-receive-pack: command not found
  $ fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Uh oh. That’s not good.

Don’t despair! We can fix this

So what’s happened? Well after googling the problem, I came across this blog post which states:

Many installations of sshd do not invoke your shell as the login shell when you directly run programs; what this means is that if your login shell is bash, only .bashrc is read and not .bash_profile. As a workaround, make sure .bashrc sets up $PATH so that you can run git-receive-pack program.

What this basically means is that when you run git push, the server looks for a program called git-receive-pack but doesn’t know where to find it. Thankfully this is easy to fix.

• On your server, switch to your home directory and use your preferred text editor (e.g. emacs, vim, or nano) to open .bashrc
• Don’t worry if there’s stuff in there, just add export PATH=${PATH}:~/bin to the bottom.
• Back on your local machine, try pushing once more. This time your output should look something like:

  Counting objects: 250, done.
  Compressing objects: 100% (228/228), done.
  Writing objects: 100% (250/250), 453.36 KiB, done.
  Total 250 (delta 116), reused 0 (delta 0)
  To [removed to keep away from prying eyes]
   * [new branch]      master -> master
  

Now to setup a working directory

Wait, what? We’re not finished yet? I’m afraid so. There is just one more step to do. Remember before I mentioned --bare? Well this means that the files in the repository cannot be accessed directly. Not being able to access the files isn’t terribly useful if you’re wanting to deploy them onto your server. Thankfully making them accessible is easy to do.

• Switch to the directory on the server you wish to deploy the files. Since I’ve been working on a django project, this would be $ cd ~/webapps/django
• $ git clone ~/repo/projectname.git
• Now you should have a working directory with all of your lovely code

In conclusion

Hopefully this is useful for those who are using WebFaction shared hosting as I know a number of people have been looking at setting up git and getting push to work. Possibly people on other shared hosting accounts may find it useful as well.

Happy git pushing!