1GIT-DAEMON(1)                     Git Manual                     GIT-DAEMON(1)
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NAME

6       git-daemon - A really simple server for Git repositories
7

SYNOPSIS

9       git daemon [--verbose] [--syslog] [--export-all]
10                    [--timeout=<n>] [--init-timeout=<n>] [--max-connections=<n>]
11                    [--strict-paths] [--base-path=<path>] [--base-path-relaxed]
12                    [--user-path | --user-path=<path>]
13                    [--interpolated-path=<pathtemplate>]
14                    [--reuseaddr] [--detach] [--pid-file=<file>]
15                    [--enable=<service>] [--disable=<service>]
16                    [--allow-override=<service>] [--forbid-override=<service>]
17                    [--access-hook=<path>] [--[no-]informative-errors]
18                    [--inetd |
19                     [--listen=<host_or_ipaddr>] [--port=<n>]
20                     [--user=<user> [--group=<group>]]]
21                    [--log-destination=(stderr|syslog|none)]
22                    [<directory>...]
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24

DESCRIPTION

26       A really simple TCP Git daemon that normally listens on port
27       "DEFAULT_GIT_PORT" aka 9418. It waits for a connection asking for a
28       service, and will serve that service if it is enabled.
29
30       It verifies that the directory has the magic file
31       "git-daemon-export-ok", and it will refuse to export any Git directory
32       that hasn’t explicitly been marked for export this way (unless the
33       --export-all parameter is specified). If you pass some directory paths
34       as git daemon arguments, you can further restrict the offers to a
35       whitelist comprising of those.
36
37       By default, only upload-pack service is enabled, which serves git
38       fetch-pack and git ls-remote clients, which are invoked from git fetch,
39       git pull, and git clone.
40
41       This is ideally suited for read-only updates, i.e., pulling from Git
42       repositories.
43
44       An upload-archive also exists to serve git archive.
45

OPTIONS

47       --strict-paths
48           Match paths exactly (i.e. don’t allow "/foo/repo" when the real
49           path is "/foo/repo.git" or "/foo/repo/.git") and don’t do
50           user-relative paths.  git daemon will refuse to start when this
51           option is enabled and no whitelist is specified.
52
53       --base-path=<path>
54           Remap all the path requests as relative to the given path. This is
55           sort of "Git root" - if you run git daemon with
56           --base-path=/srv/git on example.com, then if you later try to pull
57           git://example.com/hello.git, git daemon will interpret the path as
58           /srv/git/hello.git.
59
60       --base-path-relaxed
61           If --base-path is enabled and repo lookup fails, with this option
62           git daemon will attempt to lookup without prefixing the base path.
63           This is useful for switching to --base-path usage, while still
64           allowing the old paths.
65
66       --interpolated-path=<pathtemplate>
67           To support virtual hosting, an interpolated path template can be
68           used to dynamically construct alternate paths. The template
69           supports %H for the target hostname as supplied by the client but
70           converted to all lowercase, %CH for the canonical hostname, %IP for
71           the server’s IP address, %P for the port number, and %D for the
72           absolute path of the named repository. After interpolation, the
73           path is validated against the directory whitelist.
74
75       --export-all
76           Allow pulling from all directories that look like Git repositories
77           (have the objects and refs subdirectories), even if they do not
78           have the git-daemon-export-ok file.
79
80       --inetd
81           Have the server run as an inetd service. Implies --syslog (may be
82           overridden with --log-destination=). Incompatible with --detach,
83           --port, --listen, --user and --group options.
84
85       --listen=<host_or_ipaddr>
86           Listen on a specific IP address or hostname. IP addresses can be
87           either an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address if supported. If IPv6 is
88           not supported, then --listen=hostname is also not supported and
89           --listen must be given an IPv4 address. Can be given more than
90           once. Incompatible with --inetd option.
91
92       --port=<n>
93           Listen on an alternative port. Incompatible with --inetd option.
94
95       --init-timeout=<n>
96           Timeout (in seconds) between the moment the connection is
97           established and the client request is received (typically a rather
98           low value, since that should be basically immediate).
99
100       --timeout=<n>
101           Timeout (in seconds) for specific client sub-requests. This
102           includes the time it takes for the server to process the
103           sub-request and the time spent waiting for the next client’s
104           request.
105
106       --max-connections=<n>
107           Maximum number of concurrent clients, defaults to 32. Set it to
108           zero for no limit.
109
110       --syslog
111           Short for --log-destination=syslog.
112
113       --log-destination=<destination>
114           Send log messages to the specified destination. Note that this
115           option does not imply --verbose, thus by default only error
116           conditions will be logged. The <destination> must be one of:
117
118           stderr
119               Write to standard error. Note that if --detach is specified,
120               the process disconnects from the real standard error, making
121               this destination effectively equivalent to none.
122
123           syslog
124               Write to syslog, using the git-daemon identifier.
125
126           none
127               Disable all logging.
128
129           The default destination is syslog if --inetd or --detach is
130           specified, otherwise stderr.
131
132       --user-path, --user-path=<path>
133           Allow ~user notation to be used in requests. When specified with no
134           parameter, requests to git://host/~alice/foo is taken as a request
135           to access foo repository in the home directory of user alice. If
136           --user-path=path is specified, the same request is taken as a
137           request to access path/foo repository in the home directory of user
138           alice.
139
140       --verbose
141           Log details about the incoming connections and requested files.
142
143       --reuseaddr
144           Use SO_REUSEADDR when binding the listening socket. This allows the
145           server to restart without waiting for old connections to time out.
146
147       --detach
148           Detach from the shell. Implies --syslog.
149
150       --pid-file=<file>
151           Save the process id in file. Ignored when the daemon is run under
152           --inetd.
153
154       --user=<user>, --group=<group>
155           Change daemon’s uid and gid before entering the service loop. When
156           only --user is given without --group, the primary group ID for the
157           user is used. The values of the option are given to getpwnam(3) and
158           getgrnam(3) and numeric IDs are not supported.
159
160           Giving these options is an error when used with --inetd; use the
161           facility of inet daemon to achieve the same before spawning git
162           daemon if needed.
163
164           Like many programs that switch user id, the daemon does not reset
165           environment variables such as $HOME when it runs git programs, e.g.
166           upload-pack and receive-pack. When using this option, you may also
167           want to set and export HOME to point at the home directory of
168           <user> before starting the daemon, and make sure any Git
169           configuration files in that directory are readable by <user>.
170
171       --enable=<service>, --disable=<service>
172           Enable/disable the service site-wide per default. Note that a
173           service disabled site-wide can still be enabled per repository if
174           it is marked overridable and the repository enables the service
175           with a configuration item.
176
177       --allow-override=<service>, --forbid-override=<service>
178           Allow/forbid overriding the site-wide default with per repository
179           configuration. By default, all the services may be overridden.
180
181       --[no-]informative-errors
182           When informative errors are turned on, git-daemon will report more
183           verbose errors to the client, differentiating conditions like "no
184           such repository" from "repository not exported". This is more
185           convenient for clients, but may leak information about the
186           existence of unexported repositories. When informative errors are
187           not enabled, all errors report "access denied" to the client. The
188           default is --no-informative-errors.
189
190       --access-hook=<path>
191           Every time a client connects, first run an external command
192           specified by the <path> with service name (e.g. "upload-pack"),
193           path to the repository, hostname (%H), canonical hostname (%CH), IP
194           address (%IP), and TCP port (%P) as its command-line arguments. The
195           external command can decide to decline the service by exiting with
196           a non-zero status (or to allow it by exiting with a zero status).
197           It can also look at the $REMOTE_ADDR and $REMOTE_PORT environment
198           variables to learn about the requestor when making this decision.
199
200           The external command can optionally write a single line to its
201           standard output to be sent to the requestor as an error message
202           when it declines the service.
203
204       <directory>
205           A directory to add to the whitelist of allowed directories. Unless
206           --strict-paths is specified this will also include subdirectories
207           of each named directory.
208

SERVICES

210       These services can be globally enabled/disabled using the command-line
211       options of this command. If finer-grained control is desired (e.g. to
212       allow git archive to be run against only in a few selected repositories
213       the daemon serves), the per-repository configuration file can be used
214       to enable or disable them.
215
216       upload-pack
217           This serves git fetch-pack and git ls-remote clients. It is enabled
218           by default, but a repository can disable it by setting
219           daemon.uploadpack configuration item to false.
220
221       upload-archive
222           This serves git archive --remote. It is disabled by default, but a
223           repository can enable it by setting daemon.uploadarch configuration
224           item to true.
225
226       receive-pack
227           This serves git send-pack clients, allowing anonymous push. It is
228           disabled by default, as there is no authentication in the protocol
229           (in other words, anybody can push anything into the repository,
230           including removal of refs). This is solely meant for a closed LAN
231           setting where everybody is friendly. This service can be enabled by
232           setting daemon.receivepack configuration item to true.
233

EXAMPLES

235       We assume the following in /etc/services
236
237               $ grep 9418 /etc/services
238               git             9418/tcp                # Git Version Control System
239
240
241       git daemon as inetd server
242           To set up git daemon as an inetd service that handles any
243           repository under the whitelisted set of directories, /pub/foo and
244           /pub/bar, place an entry like the following into /etc/inetd all on
245           one line:
246
247                       git stream tcp nowait nobody  /usr/bin/git
248                               git daemon --inetd --verbose --export-all
249                               /pub/foo /pub/bar
250
251
252       git daemon as inetd server for virtual hosts
253           To set up git daemon as an inetd service that handles repositories
254           for different virtual hosts, www.example.com and www.example.org,
255           place an entry like the following into /etc/inetd all on one line:
256
257                       git stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git
258                               git daemon --inetd --verbose --export-all
259                               --interpolated-path=/pub/%H%D
260                               /pub/www.example.org/software
261                               /pub/www.example.com/software
262                               /software
263
264           In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain a
265           subdirectory for each virtual host name supported. Further, both
266           hosts advertise repositories simply as
267           git://www.example.com/software/repo.git. For pre-1.4.0 clients, a
268           symlink from /software into the appropriate default repository
269           could be made as well.
270
271       git daemon as regular daemon for virtual hosts
272           To set up git daemon as a regular, non-inetd service that handles
273           repositories for multiple virtual hosts based on their IP
274           addresses, start the daemon like this:
275
276                       git daemon --verbose --export-all
277                               --interpolated-path=/pub/%IP/%D
278                               /pub/192.168.1.200/software
279                               /pub/10.10.220.23/software
280
281           In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain a
282           subdirectory for each virtual host IP address supported.
283           Repositories can still be accessed by hostname though, assuming
284           they correspond to these IP addresses.
285
286       selectively enable/disable services per repository
287           To enable git archive --remote and disable git fetch against a
288           repository, have the following in the configuration file in the
289           repository (that is the file config next to HEAD, refs and
290           objects).
291
292                       [daemon]
293                               uploadpack = false
294                               uploadarch = true
295
296

ENVIRONMENT

298       git daemon will set REMOTE_ADDR to the IP address of the client that
299       connected to it, if the IP address is available. REMOTE_ADDR will be
300       available in the environment of hooks called when services are
301       performed.
302

GIT

304       Part of the git(1) suite
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308Git 2.24.1                        12/10/2019                     GIT-DAEMON(1)
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