Gitweb and apache server in ubuntu 10.04

Hi this is a simple problem that I had with Ubuntu 10.04 , git 1.7.1.1, gitweb and apache http server 2.2.16. las week.
The main problema was that I couldn't implement a local server for and internal project in a LAN network and then public the Git repositories in a gitweb template and that any one inside the LAN could clone them by http .
Well there are many pages of how to do this and they were very helpful you will find them in the end of this comment but I hope this detailed guide could help someone else if you follow this steps
first you should have installed in your computer the latest version of git ( http://git-scm.com/ ) or tipe

$sudo apt-get install git-core

Install the apache server 2

$sudo apt-get install apache2-utils apache2-common

Then after doing this you should be able to type in your browser http://localhost/ and it should appear
It works!
This is the default web page for this server.
The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet.
Well done you have a local server on your LAN wasn't so hard really ? So try it type your IP in the web browser

$ifconfig

will show your IP
NOW THE HARDEST PART FOR ME sorry if it isn't for some one else. But I am new in linux and was hard.

VIRTUAL HOST
imagine that this is not a computer instead a server, as you want well it should have the capability to handle different web pages or hosts
Virtual Hosting allow web servers to host more than one website on a single machine. This is how sharing hosting works. It will allow you to access to your local repository using addresses such as http://dev.mysite.com instead of http://localhost/~myuser/myproject/ .
First of all, you need an apache server ready to run on your machine (like we said before), if it is not yet install, open a terminal and type
Once the server is installed, it is time to get into apache 2 configuration.
Let's open apache's main configuration file, name /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. A search for the word virtual bring us to the following line:

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/[^.#]*

This mean that when starting apache, it will look for files in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/.
Let’s go there and see what is in.

$cd /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

$ls -l

total 1

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 2005-12-27 01:42 000-default -> /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Well, this only links to the file in directory /etc/apache2/sites-available/ . You might wonder what is the point in doing such. Well, this simply allows you, mainly when you are using your box as a web server, to:

1. Have a simple main configuration file
2. Do be able to edit or create a new host by creating/editing a file from /etc/apache2/sites-available/
3. In case your web server doesn't restart because of misconfiguration, you can simply remove the link from the file in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ pointing to the malformed file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Now let say you want to be able to map the domain name dev.example.com to you local machine, using the code file in /home/myuser/public_html/example.com/.
While in /etc/apache2/sites-available, create a new file (let say example.com.conf)

$sudo vi example.com.conf

Now add the following lines:

<VirtualHost dev.example.com>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
#We want to be able to access the web site using www.dev.example.com or dev.example.com
ServerAlias www.dev.example.com
DocumentRoot /home/myuser/public_html/ example.com
#if using awstats
ScriptAlias /awstats/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
#we want specific log file for this server
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Now, we specified a new host to apache but it is not yet linked to the repertory where apache actually look for virtual hosts. Let go to:

$cd /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

and create a link to the file we just created:

$sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf example.com.conf

Now apache is almost ready to restart, but before doing so, we must inform our linux system that dev.example.com and www.dev.example.com are not to be looked for on the net, but on the local machine instead.
To do so, simply edit /etc/hosts and add the new host names at the end of the line beginning by 127.0.0.1, which is localhost.
In the end, your file should look like:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost dev.example.com www.dev.example.com

And now we are done, simply reload apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Open your web browser and enter the following address dev.example.com. And will bring your web page.

CLONING YOUR PROJECT BY YOUR VIRTUAL HOST
If it works well there are just one single thing to do in order to work with static IP addresses
if your IP is FOR EXAMPLE 197.12.2.0

<VirtualHost 197.12.2.0:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
#We want to be able to access the web site using www.dev.example.com or dev.example.com
ServerAlias www.dev.example.com
DocumentRoot /home/myuser/public_html/example.com
#if using awstats
ScriptAlias /awstats/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
#we want specific log file for this server
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

and that’s all, try to put your IP address in other computer and it will work with out touching the /etc/hosts file.
Now let’s check if this work in git repositories, that is what we want.

Imagine that you have a Git project like project1, we need to clone it with --bare option in order to put it like public, this topic is well described in the progit book (http://progit.org/book/) on the public server chapter (http://progit.org/book/ch4-5.html) when you have your git repositories like project1.git in the example directory /home/yourname/yourrepos/ and you can clone it successfully with the instruction
git clone /home/yourname/yourrepos/project1.git
in any place of your computer, it means that you just need to do this

$ cd project1.git
$ mv hooks/post-update.sample hooks/post-update
$ chmod a+x hooks/post-update

$ git update-server-info

Next, you need to add a VirtualHost entry to your Apache configuration with the document root as the root directory of your Git projects. ( This was the part that I was stook for a week )
We already have a virtual host working ( that was why I decided to first implement the Visrtual Host in apache )

<VirtualHost 197.12.2.0:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName git.example.com
ServerAlias www.git.example.com
DocumentRoot /home/yourname/yourrepos
ScriptAlias /awstats/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

You’ll also need to set the Unix user group of the drectories to www-data so your web server can read-access the repositories, because the Apache instance running the CGI script will (by default) be running as that user:
$ chgrp -R www-data /home/yourname/yourrepos/

Now reload your apache and try to check your IP address in your web browser it will show your files, not in the way we want.
Try to clone your project
$git clone http://197.12.2.0/project1.git
If it works, perfect you can keep on this tutorial.

GITWEB
Install gitweb

$ sudo apt-get install gitweb

clone the git project

$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git

generate the custom CGI script

$ cd git/
$ make GITWEB_PROJECTROOT=" /home/yourname/yourrepos/" prefix=/usr gitweb/gitweb.cgi

$ sudo cp -Rf gitweb /var/www/

now check the /etc/gitweb.conf file , it shoul be something like this
# path to git projects (<project>.git) #### CHANGE TO YOUR PROJECTROOT###
$projectroot = "/home/yourname/yourrepos/";
# directory to use for temp files
$git_temp = "/tmp";
# target of the home link on top of all pages
#$home_link = $my_uri || "/";
# html text to include at home page
$home_text = "indextext.html";
########CHANGE TO YOUR LAST VIRTUAL HOST ####
@git_base_url_list = ('http://git.example.com');
# file with project list; by default, simply scan the projectroot dir.
$projects_list = $projectroot;
# stylesheet to use
$stylesheet = "/gitweb/gitweb.css";
# logo to use
$logo = "/gitweb/git-logo.png";
# the 'favicon'
$favicon = "/gitweb/git-favicon.png";

Now we should make another Virtual Host like we did above in the VIRTUAL HOST section
but it should be like this

<VirtualHost 197.12.2.0:80>
ServerName dev.example.com
ServerAlias www.dev.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/gitweb
<Directory /var/www/gitweb>
Options ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
AllowOverride All
order allow,deny
Allow from all
AddHandler cgi-script cgi
DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi
</Directory>
#if using awstats
ScriptAlias /awstats/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
#we want specific log file for this server
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/example.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

If you reload your apache, it will tell you to use the name virtual host option, here is the best of apache the capability to handle more that one virtual host just. Here we've setup two different directory trees, one for each site. If you wanted to have identical content it might make sense to only create one, and then use symbolic links instead.
The next thing to do is to enable virtual hosts in your Apache configuration. The simplest way to do this is to create a file called /etc/apache2/conf.d/virtual.conf and include the following content in it:

#
# We're running multiple virtual hosts.
#
NameVirtualHost *

(When Apache starts up it reads the contents of all files included in /etc/apache2/conf.d, and files you create here won't get trashed on package upgrades.)
To enable the sites that we have created simply run as root :

# a2ensite git.example.com

and the same for all the sites enabled
At finally thats all, it wasn't soo difficult but take some time to fix this problem now when you load your web page it should look like http://git.kernel.org/ and you should be able to clone like your web page said.

#################IMPORTANT #################
IF YOU HAVE A PROXY IN YOUR NETWORK YOU SHOULD DESEABLE COMPLETELY IF NOT SOME ERRORS LIKE 504 OR 500 WILL APEAR IN YOUR TERMINAL WHEN YOU TRIE TO CLONE THE PROJECTS
TRY WITH unset http_proxy
it could work it depends how you had configure your proxy
if some one else find another way to do this please feel free to contribute whit this long post
Hope it could help someone trying to do implement gitweb in ubuntu 10.04 and apache 2
Thanks for all
Sincerely yours
Victor Rodriguez