Gitolite git clone error

Question

I am trying to setup gitolite on my server (Macos server).

I followed the instructions in the INSTALL document found here : http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/doc/1

Answer 1

The OP skipper3k reports an issue with RUNTIME_PREFIX in Git, a bit similar to "git pull broken" question:

I'm not sure whether RUNTIME_PREFIX is defined for you. But while nosing in the Makefile, I did notice that prefix defaults to $(HOME). I suspect that this may be the cause of your problems.

The simple answer is to put this in ~/.bashrc:

export GIT_EXEC_PATH=/opt/local/libexec/git-core

If you want to find out more about what's going on, you'll probably have to recompile git using port -d upgrade -f git-core (or similar) and look closely at the build log to see where prefix is being set.
Incidentally, port cat git-core shows heavy usage of ${prefix}.

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Original answer:

First, did you get the most up-to-date gitolite version?
At https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite/, you need to consider the 'pu' branch.

The installation documentation is then this one.

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GitoliteV3 or 'g3' doc:

"Installation" consists of the following options:

1. Keep the sources anywhere and use the full path to run the gitolite command.
2. Keep the sources anywhere and symlink just the gitolite program to some directory on your $PATH.
3. Copy the sources somewhere and use that path to run the gitolite command.

You can run the 'install' command in 3 different ways:

# option 1
gitolite/install

# option 2
gitolite/install -ln
# defaults to $HOME/bin, or use a specific directory:
gitolite/install -ln /usr/local/bin

# option 3
gitolite/install -to /usr/local/gitolite/bin

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Old answer for gitolite V2: Second, I prefer the "from-client method" method:

The advantage of this method is that it forces you to solve the ssh pubkey problem before attempting to install.
It works best if you have dedicated userids,

• one on the server for installing gitolite,
• and one on the client for administering it.

The disadvantage is that the admin user ends up with two keys

• one for shell access (that he started with) and
• one for gitolite access (which the script creates if needed).

So I like to create a ~/.ssh/config file with the two different sets of parameters:

host gitolite
     user git
     hostname server
     identityfile ~/.ssh/git
host gitadmin
     user git
     hostname server
     identityfile ~/.ssh/id_rsa (myaccount public key)

The gitolite-admin is only visible for the first public ssh key:

C:\HOMEWARE\git>ssh gitolite
hello git, the gitolite version here is v1.5.9-25-ga10287a
the gitolite config gives you the following access:
     R   W      gitolite-admin
    @R_ @W_     testing
Connection to server closed.

With my account:

C:\HOMEWARE\git>ssh gitadmin
hello myaccount, the gitolite version here is v1.5.9-25-ga10287a
the gitolite config gives you the following access:
    @R_ @W_     testing
Connection to mccprdgit10 closed.

So:

C:\HOMEWARE\git>git clone gitolite:gitolite-admin
Cloning into gitolite-admin...
remote: Counting objects: 16, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (13/13), done.
remote: Total 16 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (16/16), done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2/2), done.

Answer 2

I pretty much tried anything I could think of and couldn't get it to work...until I noticed somewhere that GIT is very high on email addresses...so I regenerated my ssh keypair using the -C option:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "nospam@nowhere.org"

Low and behold, all of a sudden I could clone gitolite-admin without any problem.

Apparently the email in .gitconfig's user.email key MUST correspond to the email that was used to generate the SSH key. Honestly, if you only have 1 keypair in your .ssh folder, why on earth does it matter that the email corresponds? Imho, if you pass a key and the key is in the authorized_keys on the server, it should work regardless of the .gitconfig user.email property.

Answer 3

It seems the correct fix to this error is to add

$ENV{GIT_EXEC_PATH} = "/usr/libexec/git-core";

to your .gitolite.rc file.

Answer 4

To pile on, as a solution for Gitolite v3, for Mac Lion, this is what worked for me:

$ENV{PATH}="/usr/local/bin:$ENV{PATH}";

Add it to ~/.gitolite.rc for the git user on the server. Make sure it is before the "1;" at the end.

As detailed in: https://serverfault.com/questions/307493/cant-clone-gitolite-admin

The solutions involving GIT_PATH are outdated, according to: http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/g2migr.html

Answer 5

The problem was with the way git was compiled on mac. I had to manually compile git without the RUNTIME_PREFIX set. Now it works.

Answer 6

don't know exactly which is the problem with your installation, it would be useful to know which commands you 've executed to install gitolite in your your server.

I recommend you to read these two links, they were helpful for me when I installed gitolite:

http://kris.me.uk/2010/09/30/git-repository-server-gitolite.html (specially this one)

http://progit.org/book/ch4-8.html