How To Install and Serve Gitweb on NGINX in Debian

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By default your cloud VPS server comes with the Apache web server installed. This will conflict with Ngnix, so I’d recommend stopping the apache2 service:

sudo service apache2 stop

You could also remove apache2 entirely:

apt remove apache2

If you haven’t already, make sure to install the git version control system; even if you have git installed locally you will need to have it installed on the server as well:

apt install git

Moving along, you will also want to install the Gitweb application itself:

apt install gitweb

Then install FastCGI:

apt install fcgiwrap

Finally, make sure to install the NGINX web server:

apt install nginx

The configuration below allows you to use any domain or subdomain you want to serve your Gitweb installation from. Of course, you must first make sure that you have your DNS configured properly. If you already have a website on your primary domain (example.com), you can use a CNAME to create a subdomain (git.example.com, for example).

server {
  listen 80;
  #replace "example.com" below with your domain (or subdomain)
  server_name example.com; 
  
  location /index.cgi {
    root /usr/share/gitweb/;
    include fastcgi_params;
    gzip off;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $uri;
    fastcgi_param GITWEB_CONFIG /etc/gitweb.conf;
    fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
  }

  location / {
    root /usr/share/gitweb/;
    index index.cgi;
  }
}

Now, make sure to reload your NGINX configuration:

sudo service nginx restart

Now when you reload the page, you should see the Gitweb interface with a “No projects found” warning. If you have not set up remote Git repositories yet, you can set up your bare git repos in the /var/lib/git directory, which is the default location Gitweb checks for repos. You can customize this directory location with the Gitweb configuration file: /etc/gitweb.conf.

For further reading, check out some of the other git-related content from the Support Center:

• Git fundamentals (complete guide)
• How to create your own git server