How To Install Gitea Git Server on Debian 10

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For lightweight git server, gitea already gain a lot user because it easy to install and the interface similar to Github. The goal of this post is to provide the easiest, fastest, and most painless way of setting up a self-hosted Git service. Since gitea created using the Go language, it supports a lot of operating systems includes Linux, macOS, and Windows, on architectures like amd64, i386, ARM, PowerPC, and others.

Prerequisite
– Debian 10
– Domain name
– Basic CLI knowledge

For my personal project, I use Gitea for it’s lightweight and preferred self-hosted on my Homelab because of privacy reasons.

Setup DNS Record

Setup the DNS for your domain, in my case I setup gitea.atetux.com to the server IP.
setup sub domain record

Install Git

Install the latest git version supported by Debian 10.

sudo apt install git -y

Debian 10 setup git

Download Gitea

Download Gitea from release page

wget https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/download/v1.12.4/gitea-1.12.4-linux-amd64 -O gitea

gitea download
Set the permission, so the gitea able to run

chmod +x gitea

Gitea Systemd

Create systemd for gitea services on /etc/systemd/system/gitea.service

[Unit]
Description=Gitea
After=syslog.target
After=network.target
[Service]
LimitMEMLOCK=infinity
LimitNOFILE=4000
RestartSec=2s
Type=simple
User=atetux
Group=atetux
WorkingDirectory=/home/atetux
ExecStart=/home/atetux/gitea web --config custom/conf/app.ini
Restart=always
Environment=USER=atetux HOME=/home/atetux GITEA_WORK_DIR=/home/atetux
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Change the atetux to your username

Enable gitea on boot

sudo systemctl enable gitea

Start gitea

sudo systemctl start gitea

started gitea
Open the IP-SERVER:3000 or domain:3000 on browser, we’ll setup the SSL later
Gitea on browser for the first time
Back to terminal, hit CTRL + C to close the gitea process.

Install Certbot Letsencrypt

Install Nginx

Since to able to run on port 80/443 gitea need to run as root, which is a security nightmare. Instead, we’ll use Nginx as a reverse proxy for Gitea, we’ll mapping the port 3000 to our subdomain, for this case gitea.domain.com

sudo apt install nginx -y

Install Certbot

sudo apt install certbot python-certbot-nginx -y

Generate SSL for Gitea

sudo certbot --nginx -d DOMAIN --agree-tos -m email@gmail.com

When asked :
We’d like to send you email about our work encrypting the web, EFF news, campaigns, and ways to support digital freedom. Enter N
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access. Enter 2

ssl letsencrypt installed

Open gitea.domain.com on a browser to check if SSL working
subdomain works
it works, because it show the default nginx page.

Setup Gitea Reverse Proxy

Open the nginx config file on /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default, find the line 118

location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}

set the proxy_pass to gitea url

location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
}

Open https://gitea.domain.com on browser to check the reverse proxy working as expected.
reverse proxy working

Enable nginx on boot

sudo systemctl enable nginx

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