# Install and Use Gitea

Here I document my steps to get Gitea up and running on a Debian server.

Gitea is a self-hosted service to host and accept contributions to your git repositories on the web.

## Prerequisites

* git
    
* curl/wget to obtain the binary
    
* MySQL/PostgreSQL/MSSQL/SQLite3/TiDB
    

## Getting Gitea

Go to Gitea's official website for [installation instructions](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/install-from-binary/).

It usually boils down to

1. Obtaining and verifying the binary
    
2. Creating a user
    
3. Creating directory structure
    
4. Creating a service file
    
5. Setting up a databse
    
6. Configuring Gitea
    

## Create user

Create a user to run Gitea. Here we name it 'gitea' for the sake of our convenience.

```bash
adduer \
--system \
--shell /bin/bash \
--gecos 'Gitea' \
--group \
--disabled-password \
--home /home/gitea \
gitea
```

## Create directory structure

```bash
mkdir -p /var/lib/gitea/{custom,data.log}
chown -R gitea:gitea /var/lib/gitea
chmod -R 750 /var/lib/gitea
mkdir /etc/gitea
chown root:gitea /etc/gitea
chmod 770 /etc/gitea
```

## Copy Gitea binary to global location

```bash
cp gitea /usr/local/bin/gitea
```

## Create a service file

Copy the sample [gitea.service](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/contrib/systemd/gitea.service) to `/etc/systemd/system/gitea.service`, then edit the file with a text editor.

Replace the lines starting with `---` to `+++`.

```plaintext
--- #Wants=postgresql.service
--- #After=postgresql.service
+++ Wants=postgresql.service
+++ After=postgresql.service

--- User=git
--- Group=git
+++ User=gitea
+++ Group=gitea
```

## Set up a database

As user `postgres`, run the following

```pgsql
createuser gitea
createdb gitea
psql
alter user gites with encrypted password 'super-secure-password';
grant all privileges on database gitea to gitea;
\q
```

## Set up a web server

Put the following configuration in `/etc/caddy/Caddyfile`

```plaintext
gitea.adityakumar.com {
  reverse_proxy localhost:3000

}
```

Now reload caddy

```bash
systemctl reload caddy
```

## Configure Gitea

Enable and start Gitea

```bash
systemctl enable --now gitea.service
```

Head to the website, or go to `localhost:3000` if you have physical access to the server. Alternatively you can use port forwarding to configure Gitea using your local machine.

On the page,

* enter database username, password and database name.
    
* change Site Title to whatever you prefer.
    
* enter `gitea` in Run As Username field.
    
* change Gitea Base URL to the site's URL
    

Rest of the options should be left as is unless you have other requirements.

Click on Install Gitea. It should write the configuration to `/etc/gitea/app.ini` and be ready for use.

Now change permissions on `/etc/gitea` to make it read-only.

```bash
chmod 750 /etc/gitea
chmod 640 /etc/gitea/app.ini
```