Our Goal

The Easy Part

Nginx is fun, and I've used it before with fastcgi. Let's do the easy parts. I've already set gitolite3's UMASK to be a bit less righteous for interoperability with git-daemon+xinited, so we'll move on to the new configuration.

apt-get install fcgiwrap
systemctl enable fcgiwrap
chmod -R go-rwx /var/lib/gitolite3
chmod -R g+rx /var/lib/gitolite3
adduser www-data gitolite3

server {
       server_name projects.languidnights.com;
       listen 443 ssl;
       list [::]:443 ssl;

       gzip off;

       location /cgit/ {
           root /usr/lib/cgit/;
           include fastcgi_params;
           fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/lib/cgit/cgit.cgi;
           fastcgi_pass  unix:/run/fcgiwrap.socket
           fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $args;
           fastcgi_param HTTP_HOST $server_name;
       }

       location /cgit-css/ {
           root /usr/share/cgit/;
       }
}

Problem Numero Uno

What do you mean I can't see the stylesheets and images? Oh, you want it to be an alias, not a directory. I got it

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/projects

--- a        2024-01-21 05:54:37.553311062 +0000
+++ b        2024-01-21 05:54:54.113321210 +0000
@@ -48,6 +48,6 @@
       }

       location /cgit-css/ {
-            root /usr/share/cgit/;
+            alias /usr/share/cgit/;
       }
}

Let's configure cgit

It's got a pretty good man page man 5 cgitrc and I did this in the before times with gitolite2, so let's go.

css=/cgit-css/cgit.css
logo=/cgit-css/cgit.png
favicon=/cgit-css/favicon.ico

root-title=LanguidNights' Git Repositories
root-desc=various and sundry
enable-index-links=1
enable-git-config=1
remove-suffix=1

project-list=/var/lib/gitolite3/projects.list
scan-path=/var/lib/gitolite3/repositories

So Far

It works beautifully. That is, if you happen to be sitting on the server and part of the www-data group.

sudo -u www-data /usr/lib/cgit/cgit.cgi

If, like me, you want your website for your git repos to be viewable on the web, still no joy. It just says 'no repositories found'. I know that's a lie, cgit! Give me your secrets, I'm going mad and it's past midnight! Nothing in my error logs, nothings in my access logs, nothing in my syslog. What is going on?

ls -l /var/lib/gitolite3
cat /var/lib/gitolite3/projects.list
systemctl restart fcgiwrap.socket fcgiwrap.service nginx.service

And no joy! You're lucky I'm bald, or I'd have thrown handfuls of my own hair at you!

The Final Pieces

Courtesy of The Arch Linux BBS I finally got the last piece, which I missed in all the relevant documentation. It consisted of two parts

/etc/cgitrc

--- a        2024-01-21 05:42:37.240863180 +0000
+++ b        2024-01-21 05:42:28.244857393 +0000
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
logo=/cgit-css/cgit.png
favicon=/cgit-css/favicon.ico

+virtual-root=/cgit/
root-title=LanguidNight's Git Repositories
root-desc=various and sundry
enable-index-links=1

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/projects

--- a        2024-01-21 05:32:23.356460060 +0000
+++ b        2024-01-21 05:32:12.704453273 +0000
@@ -43,6 +43,8 @@
       fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/lib/cgit/cgit.cgi;
       fastcgi_pass  unix:/run/fcgiwrap.socket;

+    fastcgi_split_path_info         ^(/cgit/?)(.+)$;
+    fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
       fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING    $args;
       fastcgi_param HTTP_HOST       $server_name;
}

And, we have joy. My life is now better than it was a 3:00pm at least, and I can finally go to bed. Well, just as soon as I write this up for posterity.