1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

     2 <article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0" xml:lang="en">

     3 <info>

     4   <title>Sharing Mercurial repositories with mercurial-server</title>

     5   <author><firstname>Paul</firstname><surname>Crowley</surname></author>

     6   <copyright><year>2009</year><holder>Paul Crowley</holder></copyright>

     7 </info>

     8 <section>

     9 <title>About mercurial-server</title>

    10 <para>

    11 mercurial-server is software for Debian and Ubuntu systems which gives your

    12 developers remote read/write access to <ulink

    13 url="http://hg-scm.org/">Mercurial</ulink> repositories using SSH public

    14 key authentication; it provides convenient and fine-grained key management

    15 and access control.

    16 </para>

    17 <para>

    18 mercurial-server is the easiest and most secure way for several developers

    19 to have read/write access to a central repository, but that's not the only

    20 way for several people to work on the same project using Mercurial; you

    21 should be familiar with the <ulink

    22 url="http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MultipleCommitters">other ways of

    23 handling multiple commiters</ulink> before deciding to use this.

    24 </para>

    25 <para>

    26 Though mercurial-server is currently targeted at Debian-based systems such

    27 as Ubuntu, other users have reported success getting it running on other

    28 Unix-based systems such as Red Hat. Running it on a non-Unix system such as

    29 Windows is not supported. You will need root privileges to install it.

    30 </para>

    31 <section>

    32 <title>Legalese</title>

    33 <para>

    34 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it

    35 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free

    36 Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)

    37 any later version.

    38 </para>

    39 <para>

    40 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

    41 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY

    42 or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for

    43 more details.

    44 </para>

    45 <para>

    46 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along

    47 with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51

    48 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

    49 </para>

    50 </section>

    51 </section>

    52 <section>

    53 <title>Step by step</title>

    54 <para>

    55 mercurial-server authenticates users not using passwords but using <ulink url="http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/">SSH public keys</ulink>; everyone who wants access to a mercurial-server repository will need such a key, so you'll need to familiarize yourself with them before proceeding.  In combination with <command>ssh-agent</command> (or equivalents such as the Windows program <ulink url="http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.60/htmldoc/Chapter9.html#pageant">Pageant</ulink>), this means that users will not need to type in a password to access the repository.

    56 </para>

    57 <para>

    58 In what follows, we assume that you usually sit at a machine called <systemitem class="systemname">my-workstation</systemitem> and you wish to install mercurial-server on <systemitem class="systemname">repository-host</systemitem>.  First, you'll need to create an SSH public key if you haven't already.  You should consult your system documentation on how to do this, but it should look something like this.

    59 </para>

    60 <screen>

    61 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>ssh-keygen</userinput>

    62 <computeroutput>Generating public/private rsa key pair.

    63 Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 

    64 Enter same passphrase again: 

    65 Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.

    66 Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

    67 The key fingerprint is:

    68 8b:aa:0a:98:fe:e7:84:48:a3:fe:5f:31:4b:16:e6:0b user@my-workstation

    69 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>ssh-add</userinput>

    70 <computeroutput>Enter passphrase for /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa: 

    71 Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa)

    72 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput></screen>

    73 <para>Now copy the files you're going to need over to your target system, and install mercurial-server</para>

    74 <screen>

    75 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>ssh-copy-id repository-host</userinput>

    76 <computeroutput>user@repository-host's password:

    77 Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'repository-host'", and check in:

    78 

    79   .ssh/authorized_keys

    80 

    81 to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting.

    82 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>scp mercurial-server_0.6.1_amd64.deb repository-host:</userinput>

    83 <computeroutput>mercurial-server_0.6.1_amd64.deb 100%

    84 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>ssh -A repository-host</userinput>

    85 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>sudo dpkg -i ../mercurial-server_0.6.1_amd64.deb</userinput>

    86 <computeroutput>[sudo] password for user: 

    87 Selecting previously deselected package mercurial-server.

    88 (Reading database ... 144805 files and directories currently installed.)

    89 Unpacking mercurial-server (from .../mercurial-server_0.6.1_amd64.deb) ...

    90 Setting up mercurial-server (0.6.1) ...

    91 user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput></screen>

    92 <para>

    93 mercurial-server is now installed on the repository host.  Next, we need to give you permission to see its repositories.

    94 </para>

    95 <screen>

    96 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>ssh-add -L > my-key</userinput>

    97 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>sudo mkdir -p /etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/user</userinput>

    98 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>sudo cp my-key /etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/user/my-workstation</userinput>

    99 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>sudo -u hg /usr/share/mercurial-server/refresh-auth</userinput>

   100 <computeroutput>user@repository-host:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>exit</userinput>

   101 <computeroutput>Connection to shell closed.

   102 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput></screen>

   103 <para>

   104 You can now create repositories on the remote machine and have complete read-write access to all of them; you need never log on to <systemitem class="systemname">repository-host</systemitem> again.

   105 </para>

   106 <screen>

   107 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>cd my-mercurial-project</userinput>

   108 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/my-mercurial-project$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg clone . ssh://hg@repository-host/repository/name</userinput>

   109 <computeroutput>searching for changes

   110 remote: adding changesets

   111 remote: adding manifests

   112 remote: adding file changes

   113 remote: added 119 changesets with 284 changes to 61 files

   114 user@my-workstation:~/my-mercurial-project$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg pull ssh://hg@repository-host/repository/name</userinput>

   115 <computeroutput>pulling from ssh://hg@repository-host/repository/name

   116 searching for changes

   117 no changes found

   118 user@my-workstation:~/my-mercurial-project$ </computeroutput></screen>

   119 <para>

   120 As things stand, no-one but you has any access to any repositories you create on this system.  In order to give anyone else access, you'll need a copy of their SSH public key.  Once you have that key, you could give them access by logging into <systemitem class="systemname">repository-host</systemitem>, putting their keys in the right place under <filename class='directory'>/etc/mercurial-server/keys</filename>, and re-running <userinput>sudo -u hg /usr/share/mercurial-server/refresh-auth</userinput>.  However, there's a more convenient way.

   121 </para>

   122 <screen>

   123 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/my-mercurial-project$ </computeroutput><userinput>cd ..</userinput>

   124 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg clone ssh://hg@repository-host/hgadmin</userinput>

   125 <computeroutput>destination directory: hgadmin

   126 no changes found

   127 updating working directory

   128 0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

   129 user@my-workstation:~$ </computeroutput><userinput>cd hgadmin</userinput>

   130 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput><userinput>mkdir -p keys/users/other-user</userinput>

   131 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput><userinput>cp ~/other-users-key.pub keys/users/other-user/their-workstation</userinput>

   132 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg add</userinput>

   133 <computeroutput>adding keys/users/other-user/their-workstation

   134 user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg commit -m "Add other user"</userinput>

   135 <computeroutput>user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput><userinput>hg push</userinput>

   136 <computeroutput>pushing to ssh://hg@repository-host/hgadmin

   137 searching for changes

   138 remote: adding changesets

   139 remote: adding manifests

   140 remote: adding file changes

   141 remote: added 1 changesets with 1 changes to 1 files

   142 user@my-workstation:~/hgadmin$ </computeroutput></screen>

   143 <para>

   144 The new user can now read and write to your <literal>ssh://hg@repository-host/repository/name</literal> repository.

   145 </para>

   146 </section>

   147 </article>

   148