Guides - Deploy Gitea through the Linode Marketplace

Gitea is a community managed, painless, self-hosted Git service. Gitea is a complete solution for all aspects of your software development. At its core, Gitea serves as your centralized remote Git repository. Gitea also features built-in tools that represent every task in your development workflow, from planning to testing to releasing.

Self-hosting your software development with the Gitea Marketplace App offers total control of your codebase. At the same time, its familiar interface eases collaboration for you and your team. Gitea is one of the most popular self-hosted Git repository platforms, allowing you to benefit from a robust set of integrated tools and an active community.

Deploying a Marketplace App

The Linode Marketplace allows you to easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using the Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.

1. Log in to the Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.

2. Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.

3. Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.

4. Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.

To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.

Configuration Options

• Supported distributions: Debian 10
• Recommended minimum plan: 4GB Dedicated Compute Instance

Gitea Options

• MySQL root Password (required): The root password for your MySQL database.
• Gitea Database Password (required): The password for your Gitea database user.

Limited User (Optional)

You can optionally fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited user for your new Compute Instance. This is recommended for most deployments as an additional security measure. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permission when running commands with the sudo prefix.

• Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user.
• Password for the limited user: Enter a strong password for the new user.
• SSH public key for the limited user: If you wish to login as the limited user through public key authentication (without entering a password), enter your public key here. See Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server for instructions on generating a key pair.
• Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes (recommended). You can still switch to the root user once logged in and you can also log in as root through Lish.

• Enable passwordless sudo access for the limited user? Select Yes to disable SSH password authentication for your limited sudo user as an additional security measure. Requires an SSH Public Key for SSH access to your Linode.

Additional Security Configuration

• Configure automatic security updates? Select Yes to enable automatic security updates for your Linode.
• Use fail2ban to prevent automated instrusion attempts? Select Yes to enable SSH login protection with Fail2Ban as an additional security measure.

Custom Domain (Optional)

If you wish to automatically configure a custom domain, you first need to configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers. This is typically accomplished directly through your registrar. See Use Linode’s Name Servers with Your Domain. Once that is finished, you can fill out the following fields for the Marketplace App:

• Linode API Token: If you wish to use the Linode’s DNS Manager to manage DNS records for your custom domain, create a Linode API Personal Access Token on your account with Read/Write access to Domains. If this is provided along with the subdomain and domain fields (outlined below), the installation attempts to create DNS records via the Linode API. See Get an API Access Token. If you do not provide this field, you need to manually configure your DNS records through your DNS provider and point them to the IP address of the new instance.
• Subdomain: The subdomain you wish to use, such as www for www.example.com.
• Domain: The domain name you wish to use, such as example.com.

• SOA Email for your domain The email address to register as your Start of Authority (SOA). This field is required for creating DNS records for a new domain.
• Do you need an MX record for this domain? Select Yes to automatically configure an MX record for the purpose of sending emails from your Linode. Additional configuration with Gitea is required after installation to enable sending emails with this app.
• Do you need an SPF record for this domain? Select Yes to automatically configure an SPF record for the purpose of sending emails from your Linode. Additional configuration with Gitea is required after installation to enable sending emails with this app.
• Would you like to use a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for your fully qualified domain name? Select Yes to configure an SSL Certificate for HTTPS access to your Gitea remote desktop. Requires a Domain and Admin Email.
• Admin Email for Let’s Encrypt certificate: The email address to register with Certbot when generating an SSL certificate for your fully qualified domain name. This field is required for HTTPS access to your Gitea remote desktop.

Getting Started after Deployment

Access your Gitea Site

After Gitea has finished installing, you can access your Gitea site using a web browser to complete setup and begin using your app.

1. Enter your Linode’s fully qualified domain name (for example, https://www.example.com) or IPv4 address (for example, http://192.0.2.0) into a browser window to access the Gitea welcome page. Select the Register link to reach the initial configuration screen.

2. Enter your Gitea Database Password in the Password field.

3. Replace localhost with your Linode’s fully qualified domain name or IPv4 address under SSH Server Domain and Gitea Base URL fields. Specify https in the Gitea Base URL field if you configured an SSL certificate for your domain.

4. Complete any other desired configurations, then select Install Gitea to complete initial configuration.

5. You can now register a new administrative user and manage repositories with your Gitea App. For more configuration instructions and settings, refer to the official Gitea Documentation.

Software Included

The Gitea Marketplace App installs the following software on your Linode:

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Gitea Documentation