git over https failed to push some refs

I have tried to use our main git repository over https but I had gotten error messages like


PUT 54510da55977f5c1e47e5356b996762f4544b90d failed, aborting (22/403)
MKCOL 3b04e830cf4e221491e38443beac0f2f4a2e61c1 failed, aborting (22/403)
PUT 96496dc5f4115e3b9a90757410158f2ba7d12c80 failed, aborting (22/403)
MKCOL af7988694ce7cc8fbfd6b40deffe78d7231cffc8 failed, aborting (22/403)
Updating remote server info
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://myserver.de/myproject.git'


It was hard to discover whats going wrong here. I have set the GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1 flag to see if there was an communication problem with my server. The communication itself was ok … but the server returns always a 403 (permission denied).

Next I had a look into my apache logs and I had seen follow error messages:


Permission denied: Unable to create a collection.


This looks like a file permission problem. I have setup a new group for my git repository and give apache the rights for read and write. But the problems still occured.

The solution was to set the correct Limit directive in the configuration for my git repository:

Alias /git /usr/var/git
<directory "/usr/var/git">
  DAV filesystem
  Options +Indexes

  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "git repositories"
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache/git.users.auth

  <limit GET PUT POST DELETE PROPPATCH MKCOL COPY MOVE LOCK UNLOCK>
    Require valid-user
  </limit>
</directory>

After a apache reload the push and pull commands working nice.

Disable live site with apache rewrite rules

Any times I have to work on a live site like http://www.capella-fidicinia.de or http://www.cryo-tekk.de. All these sites are Joomla instances and Joomla doe’s not allow to disbale the site complete. You can only put the site „offline“ with a setting in the administration module. After putting such site into the offline mode, nobody can anymore change the content and the user got a inforation bar on the site.

But often I will change complete the layout (testing new skin, working on the existing skin and so on). But the user should not see my changes because it is very ugly if you browse to a side and with every click the layout changes.

My Joomla instances running behind a apache2 webserver as a virtual host. To put the site complete offline and inform the user about maintainance you can put the follow into you virtual host configuration:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^194.136.37.140$
RewriteRule .* /var/www/domains/www.cryo-tekk.de/htdocs/maintainance.html [L]

With such entry only the IP adress 194.136.37.140 can see the site. All other IP adresses, which try to access the site are foreward to the maintainance.html site.

For more information about rewrite rules you can have a look here.