Goal

Setting up gitweb (web interface for SCM software git) for your project’s git repository for public access and developer commits via ssh.

Assumptions

1. You already have your project’s git repository.
2. You have hosting space somewhere to host gitweb.
3. You have root access.
4. You are using Apache as webserver.

Example for this howto

Project : VideoCache
Domain for gitweb : git.cachevideos.com
URL for git access for videocache : http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git
Actual path on server : /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git
Git repository : /home/saini/projects/videocache/

Installation

Installation is pretty easy. Just one single command would do everything.

[root@localhost ~]# yum install gitweb (do as root)

This will create a directory /var/www/git which is default for gitweb.

Copy the directory /var/www/git/ to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git

[root@localhost ~]# cp -r /var/www/git /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git

Configuration

1. GitWeb

Open the file /etc/gitweb.conf (it may or may not be there) and add the following lines to it.

# Change This
$projectroot = '/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git';
# Change This
$site_name = "Kulbir Saini's git trees.";
# Don't Change the variables below
$my_uri = "/";
$home_link = '/';
@stylesheets = ("/gitweb.css");
$favicon = "/git-favicon.png";
$logo = "/git-logo.png";

2. Apache

Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf and clear all the lines that are already there and add the following lines to it

  DocumentRoot /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git
  ServerName git.cachevideos.com
  ErrorLog "/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/logs/error_log"
  CustomLog "/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/logs/access_log" combined
  SetEnv  GITWEB_CONFIG  /etc/gitweb.conf
  DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi

    Allow from all
    AllowOverride all
    Order allow,deny
    Options +ExecCGI
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

      SetHandler cgi-script

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+\.git/?(\?.*)?$ /gitweb.cgi%{REQUEST_URI} [L,PT]

3. Git repository configuration

Go to your git repository (/home/saini/projects/videocache/) and make the following changes.

(a). Open file .git/description and add a short nice description for your project.

videocache is a squid url rewriter plugin written in Python to facilitate youtube, metacafe, dailymotion, google, vimeo, msn soapbox, tvuol.uol.com.br, blip.tv, break.com videos and wrzuta.pl audio caching.

(b). Open file .git/config and append the following lines

[gitweb]
  owner = "Kulbir Saini"

Copy project’s git repository for gitweb

Copy the /home/saini/projects/videocache/.git directory to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

[root@localhost ~]# cp -r /home/saini/projects/videocache/.git /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

Finishing Step

Restart Apache webserver.

[root@localhost ~]# service httpd restart

Now you can browser a list of your projects’ git repositories at http://git.cachevideos.com/ .

Adding another project repository

Just copy the project repository’s .git directory to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/prjoect_name.git. And it’ll be shown on the list.

Committing (pushing) to the repository

For committing to the repository via ssh use the following command.

# Pushing everything (Please see the username)
[root@localhost videocache]# git push --all ssh://saini@git.cachevideos.com/~saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

To update tags on the remote repository use this command.

# Pushing all tags
[root@localhost videocache]# git push --tags ssh://saini@git.cachevideos.com/~saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

Well, if you consider just the web interface and committing part for your project, thats all. But things can be fine tuned further. Below are few hacks!

1. Enabling nice urls.

By default the urls for browsing repository via git web are pretty crappy and difficult to remember. The RewriteRule and RewriteEngine lines in your Apache configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf) takes care of that and produce nice and clean urls.

So you can browser the repository via http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git instead of http://git.cachevideos.com/?p=videocache.git;a=summary.

2. Enabling remote ls (git-ls-remote or git ls-remote)

This is the most trickiest part. If you try the command below, it won’t produce any output

[root@localhost ~]# git-ls-remote http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git

You need to go to project’s repository in gitweb and then run the following command to update the server info for git.

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git/
[root@localhost ~]# git-update-server-info

Try the ls-remote command now and it should succeed by producing all the branches and tags in the remote repository.

But there is a problem, you have to run the above command after every commit to the remote repository. To solve this issue, you can enable post-update hook for the project’s repository in gitweb. Use the following command to enable it.

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git/
[root@localhost ~]# chmod +x post-update

The above command will update the server info automatically every time you commit.

Thats all you need to do for setting up gitweb. I hope this will be helpful.

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[root@gofedora html]# tail -f /var/log/httpd/error_log
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23229)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23230)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23231)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23232)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23233)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23234)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23235)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23236)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23237)
[Fri Nov 28 21:00:16 2008] [warn] long lost child came home! (pid 23238)

Reminded me of famous Indian saying, “Kumbh ke mele mein khoya wapis aa gaya“.

And Apache logs it as a warning. You long lost child has come home. You gotta run

I tried some of the functionalities and they worked out of the box. Here’s is complete how to on installing ffmpeg and ffmpeg-php.

FFMPEG:

I tried installing ffmpeg from rpms provided by several Fedora repositories but after installation ffmpeg doesn’t seem to work. After several tries, I installed ffmpeg from source rpms and it worked. Below, I will describe how to install ffmpeg from source rpm.

Step 1:

Make sure that you have ‘rpmbuild’ installed by issuing

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -q rpmbuild [Enter]

command. If the above says that rpmbuild is not installed, then install it using yum as given below

[root@bordeaux saini]# yum install rpmbuild [Enter] (do as root)

Step 2:

Download the latest src rpm of ffmpeg from rpmfind.net. Issue the command given below

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -hiv ffmpeg-x.x.x.xx-xxx.src.rpm [Enter] (do as root)

Step 3:

Go to ‘/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/’ directory and issue the command given below

[root@bordeaux saini]# cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ [Enter]
[root@bordeaux SPECS]# rpmbuild -ba ffmpeg.spec [Enter] (do as root)

If it gives an error like package ‘xyz’ is need by ffmpeg. Then install the package ‘xyz’ using yum as

[root@bordeaux SPECS]# yum install xyz [Enter] (do as root)

After installing the dependencies, issue the rpmbuild command ‘rpmbuild -ba ffmpeg.spec’. Now ffmpeg rpms will be build and they will be stored in ‘/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/’.

Step 4:

Go the ‘/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/’ (x86_64 instead of i386 if your OS is 64 bit). Install all the rpms that were built by rpmbuild.

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -hiv *.rpm [Enter] (do as root)

Thats it. ffmpeg is now successfully installed on your computer. Half the job is done. Now lets proceed with ffmpeg-php installation.

FFMPEG-PHP:

We will install ffmpeg-php from source bundle.

Step 1:

Make sure that ‘php-devel’ installed on your machine by issuing

[root@bordeaux saini]# rpm -q php-devel [Enter]

command. If the above command says the ‘php-devel’ is not installed, then install it using the following command.

[root@bordeaux saini]# yum install php-devel [Enter] (do as root)

Step 2:

Download the latest version of ffmpeg-php from here. Unpack the file you have downloaded.

[root@bordeaux saini]# bunzip2 -d ffmpeg-php-0.5.1.tbz2 [Enter]
[root@bordeaux saini]# tar -xvf ffmpeg-php-0.5.1.tar [Enter]

Step 3:

Issue the following command in sequence if everything goes fine.

[root@bordeaux saini]# cd ffmpeg-php-0.5.1 [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# phpize [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# ./configure [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ffmpeg-php-0.5.1]# make install [Enter] (do as root)

Step 4:

Open ‘/etc/php.ini’ and add a line ‘extension=ffmpeg.so’ in the category ‘Dynamic Extensions’. For help see the image below.

Step 5:

Restart apache web server aka ‘httpd’ service by issuing the command.

[root@bordeaux saini]# service httpd restart [Enter] (do as root)

Step 6:

Write a test php file and test your ffmpeg-php installation.

phpinfo();

Save the above code in ‘info.php’ and save the file in ‘/var/www/html/’ and browse http://localhost/info.php . If you see something like this.

Then the ffmpeg-php is successfully installed on your machine. Now you can jump into the world of video manipulation via your website.

Here is a complete howto on installing php-ming in Fedora. (I installed it on Fedora 7 and with php5, but howto is supposed to work with other versions as well.) Though there are rpms available for earlier versions of ming, but I wanted the latest, so installed from source.

Resources:
libming : http://www.libming.net/
PHP : http://php.net/

Step 1

First of all make sure that you have php-devel package, otherwise you will not be able to install ming at all. Do the following as root.

[root@bordeaux root]# rpm -q php-devel [Enter]

If the above command says php-devel is not installed, then fetch php-devel for your php version from here and install as given below, else proceed to step 2.

[root@bordeaux root]# rpm -hiv php-devel-5.2.2-3.i386.rpm [Enter]

Step 2

Download latest version of ming from here.

Step 3

Untar the downloaded package.

[saini@bordeaux saini]# tar -xvzf ming-0.4.0.beta5.tar.gz [Enter]

Step 4

Change directory to ‘./ming-0.4.0.beta5’ and issue ./configure and make as given below

[saini@bordeaux saini]# cd ming-0.4.0.beta5 [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# ./configure --enable-cXX --enable-php [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# make install [Enter] (as root)

Step 5

Go to ‘./php_ext’ directory and issue ‘make’ and ‘make install’.

[saini@bordeaux ming-0.4.0.beta5]# cd php_ext [Enter]
[saini@bordeaux php_ext]# make [Enter]
[root@bordeaux php_ext]# make install [Enter] (as root)

Step 6

Open make_modules.sh in your favorite editor and uncomment the line ‘make install’ and run make_modules.sh.

[root@bordeaux php_ext]# bash make_modules.sh [Enter] (as root)

Step 7

Go to ‘./tmp/modules/’ directory and copy ming.so to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’

[root@bordeaux php_ext]# cd tmp/modules/ [Enter]
[root@bordeaux modules]# cp ming.so /usr/lib/php/modules/ [Enter] (as root)

If ming.so is not found in ‘php_ext/tmp/modules/, then update your db using ‘updatedb’ and locate ming.so and if found on locate, then copy it to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’. If not found at all, try recompiling or issue some random commands related to make.

Step 8

Go to ‘/usr/local/lib/’ and check if libming.so, libming.so.0 etc. are present there. If yes proceed else I don’t know what to do

Step 9(a)

Go to ‘/usr/lib/php/modules/’ and issue these commands.

[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so libming.so (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0 libming.so.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.3.0 libming.so.0.3.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux modules]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.4.0 libming.so.0.4.0 (as root)

Step 9(b)

Go to ‘/usr/lib/’ and issue these commands.

[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so libming.so (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0 libming.so.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.3.0 libming.so.0.3.0 (as root)
[root@bordeaux lib]# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libming.so.0.4.0 libming.so.0.4.0 (as root)

Step 10

Restart the httpd service by issuing the command below

[root@bordeaux root]# service httpd restart [Enter] (as root)

Step 11

Write a file ‘/var/www/html/info.php’ with following contents

phpinfo();

and point your web browser to http://localhost/info.php . Now search for ‘ming’ and check whether its enabled or not.

If enabled, yes you have successfully installed php-ming Hope this helps.