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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SERVICES | EXAMPLES | ENVIRONMENT | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-DAEMON(1) Git Manual GIT-DAEMON(1)
git-daemon - A really simple server for Git repositories
git daemon [--verbose] [--syslog] [--export-all]
[--timeout=<n>] [--init-timeout=<n>] [--max-connections=<n>]
[--strict-paths] [--base-path=<path>] [--base-path-relaxed]
[--user-path | --user-path=<path>]
[--interpolated-path=<pathtemplate>]
[--reuseaddr] [--detach] [--pid-file=<file>]
[--enable=<service>] [--disable=<service>]
[--allow-override=<service>] [--forbid-override=<service>]
[--access-hook=<path>] [--[no-]informative-errors]
[--inetd |
[--listen=<host-or-ipaddr>] [--port=<n>]
[--user=<user> [--group=<group>]]]
[--log-destination=(stderr|syslog|none)]
[<directory>...]
A really simple TCP Git daemon that normally listens on port
"DEFAULT_GIT_PORT" aka 9418. It waits for a connection asking for
a service, and will serve that service if it is enabled.
It verifies that the directory has the magic file
"git-daemon-export-ok", and it will refuse to export any Git
directory that hasn’t explicitly been marked for export this way
(unless the --export-all parameter is specified). If you pass some
directory paths as git daemon arguments, the offers are limited to
repositories within those directories.
By default, only upload-pack service is enabled, which serves git
fetch-pack and git ls-remote clients, which are invoked from git
fetch, git pull, and git clone.
This is ideally suited for read-only updates, i.e., pulling from
Git repositories.
An upload-archive also exists to serve git archive.
--strict-paths
Match paths exactly (i.e. don’t allow "/foo/repo" when the
real path is "/foo/repo.git" or "/foo/repo/.git") and don’t do
user-relative paths. git daemon will refuse to start when
this option is enabled and no directory arguments are
provided.
--base-path=<path>
Remap all the path requests as relative to the given path.
This is sort of "Git root" - if you run git daemon with
--base-path=/srv/git on example.com, then if you later try to
pull from git://example.com/hello.git, git daemon will
interpret the path as /srv/git/hello.git.
--base-path-relaxed
If --base-path is enabled and repo lookup fails, with this
option git daemon will attempt to lookup without prefixing the
base path. This is useful for switching to --base-path usage,
while still allowing the old paths.
--interpolated-path=<pathtemplate>
To support virtual hosting, an interpolated path template can
be used to dynamically construct alternate paths. The template
supports %H for the target hostname as supplied by the client
but converted to all lowercase, %CH for the canonical
hostname, %IP for the server’s IP address, %P for the port
number, and %D for the absolute path of the named repository.
After interpolation, the path is validated against the
directory list.
--export-all
Allow pulling from all directories that look like Git
repositories (have the objects and refs subdirectories), even
if they do not have the git-daemon-export-ok file.
--inetd
Have the server run as an inetd service. Implies --syslog (may
be overridden with --log-destination=). Incompatible with
--detach, --port, --listen, --user and --group options.
--listen=<host-or-ipaddr>
Listen on a specific IP address or hostname. IP addresses can
be either an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address if supported. If
IPv6 is not supported, then --listen=<hostname> is also not
supported and --listen must be given an IPv4 address. Can be
given more than once. Incompatible with --inetd option.
--port=<n>
Listen on an alternative port. Incompatible with --inetd
option.
--init-timeout=<n>
Timeout (in seconds) between the moment the connection is
established and the client request is received (typically a
rather low value, since that should be basically immediate).
--timeout=<n>
Timeout (in seconds) for specific client sub-requests. This
includes the time it takes for the server to process the
sub-request and the time spent waiting for the next client’s
request.
--max-connections=<n>
Maximum number of concurrent clients, defaults to 32. Set it
to zero for no limit.
--syslog
Short for --log-destination=syslog.
--log-destination=<destination>
Send log messages to the specified destination. Note that this
option does not imply --verbose, thus by default only error
conditions will be logged. The <destination> must be one of:
stderr
Write to standard error. Note that if --detach is
specified, the process disconnects from the real standard
error, making this destination effectively equivalent to
none.
syslog
Write to syslog, using the git-daemon identifier.
none
Disable all logging.
The default destination is syslog if --inetd or --detach is
specified, otherwise stderr.
--user-path, --user-path=<path>
Allow ~user notation to be used in requests. When specified
with no parameter, a request to git://host/~alice/foo is taken
as a request to access foo repository in the home directory of
user alice. If --user-path=<path> is specified, the same
request is taken as a request to access <path>/foo repository
in the home directory of user alice.
--verbose
Log details about the incoming connections and requested
files.
--reuseaddr
Use SO_REUSEADDR when binding the listening socket. This
allows the server to restart without waiting for old
connections to time out.
--detach
Detach from the shell. Implies --syslog.
--pid-file=<file>
Save the process id in <file>. Ignored when the daemon is run
under --inetd.
--user=<user>, --group=<group>
Change daemon’s uid and gid before entering the service loop.
When only --user is given without --group, the primary group
ID for the user is used. The values of the option are given to
getpwnam(3) and getgrnam(3) and numeric IDs are not supported.
Giving these options is an error when used with --inetd; use
the facility of inet daemon to achieve the same before
spawning git daemon if needed.
Like many programs that switch user id, the daemon does not
reset environment variables such as HOME when it runs git
programs, e.g. upload-pack and receive-pack. When using this
option, you may also want to set and export HOME to point at
the home directory of <user> before starting the daemon, and
make sure any Git configuration files in that directory are
readable by <user>.
--enable=<service>, --disable=<service>
Enable/disable the service site-wide per default. Note that a
service disabled site-wide can still be enabled per repository
if it is marked overridable and the repository enables the
service with a configuration item.
--allow-override=<service>, --forbid-override=<service>
Allow/forbid overriding the site-wide default with per
repository configuration. By default, all the services may be
overridden.
--informative-errors, --no-informative-errors
When informative errors are turned on, git-daemon will report
more verbose errors to the client, differentiating conditions
like "no such repository" from "repository not exported". This
is more convenient for clients, but may leak information about
the existence of unexported repositories. When informative
errors are not enabled, all errors report "access denied" to
the client. The default is --no-informative-errors.
--access-hook=<path>
Every time a client connects, first run an external command
specified by the <path> with service name (e.g.
"upload-pack"), path to the repository, hostname (%H),
canonical hostname (%CH), IP address (%IP), and TCP port (%P)
as its command-line arguments. The external command can decide
to decline the service by exiting with a non-zero status (or
to allow it by exiting with a zero status). It can also look
at the $REMOTE_ADDR and $REMOTE_PORT environment variables to
learn about the requestor when making this decision.
The external command can optionally write a single line to its
standard output to be sent to the requestor as an error
message when it declines the service.
<directory>
The remaining arguments provide a list of directories. If any
directories are specified, then the git-daemon process will
serve a requested directory only if it is contained in one of
these directories. If --strict-paths is specified, then the
requested directory must match one of these directories
exactly.
These services can be globally enabled/disabled using the
command-line options of this command. If finer-grained control is
desired (e.g. to allow git archive to be run against only in a few
selected repositories the daemon serves), the per-repository
configuration file can be used to enable or disable them.
upload-pack
This serves git fetch-pack and git ls-remote clients. It is
enabled by default, but a repository can disable it by setting
daemon.uploadpack configuration item to false.
upload-archive
This serves git archive --remote. It is disabled by default,
but a repository can enable it by setting daemon.uploadarch
configuration item to true.
receive-pack
This serves git send-pack clients, allowing anonymous push. It
is disabled by default, as there is no authentication in the
protocol (in other words, anybody can push anything into the
repository, including removal of refs). This is solely meant
for a closed LAN setting where everybody is friendly. This
service can be enabled by setting daemon.receivepack
configuration item to true.
We assume the following in /etc/services
$ grep 9418 /etc/services
git 9418/tcp # Git Version Control System
git daemon as inetd server
To set up git daemon as an inetd service that handles any
repository within /pub/foo or /pub/bar, place an entry like
the following into /etc/inetd all on one line:
git stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git
git daemon --inetd --verbose --export-all
/pub/foo /pub/bar
git daemon as inetd server for virtual hosts
To set up git daemon as an inetd service that handles
repositories for different virtual hosts, www.example.com and
www.example.org, place an entry like the following into
/etc/inetd all on one line:
git stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/git
git daemon --inetd --verbose --export-all
--interpolated-path=/pub/%H%D
/pub/www.example.org/software
/pub/www.example.com/software
/software
In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain a
subdirectory for each virtual host name supported. Further,
both hosts advertise repositories simply as
git://www.example.com/software/repo.git. For pre-1.4.0
clients, a symlink from /software into the appropriate default
repository could be made as well.
git daemon as regular daemon for virtual hosts
To set up git daemon as a regular, non-inetd service that
handles repositories for multiple virtual hosts based on their
IP addresses, start the daemon like this:
git daemon --verbose --export-all
--interpolated-path=/pub/%IP/%D
/pub/192.168.1.200/software
/pub/10.10.220.23/software
In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain a
subdirectory for each virtual host IP address supported.
Repositories can still be accessed by hostname though,
assuming they correspond to these IP addresses.
selectively enable/disable services per repository
To enable git archive --remote and disable git fetch against a
repository, have the following in the configuration file in
the repository (that is the file config next to HEAD, refs and
objects).
[daemon]
uploadpack = false
uploadarch = true
git daemon will set REMOTE_ADDR to the IP address of the client
that connected to it, if the IP address is available. REMOTE_ADDR
will be available in the environment of hooks called when services
are performed.
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-DAEMON(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-cvsserver(1), git-shell(1), gitweb(1), giteveryday(7)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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