doc/http-backend: clarify "half-auth" repo configuration

When the http-backend is set up to allow anonymous read but
authenticated write, the http-backend manual suggests
catching only the "/git-receive-pack" POST of the packfile,
not the initial "info/refs?service=git-receive-pack" GET in
which we advertise refs.

This does work and is secure, as we do not allow any write
during the info/refs request, and the information in the ref
advertisement is the same that you would get from a fetch.

However, the configuration required by the server is
slightly more complex. The default `http.receivepack`
setting is to allow pushes if the webserver tells us that
the user authenticated, and otherwise to return a 403
("Forbidden"). That works fine if authentication is turned
on completely; the initial request requires authentication,
and http-backend realizes it is OK to do a push.

But for this "half-auth" state, no authentication has
occurred during the initial ref advertisement. The
http-backend CGI therefore does not think that pushing
should be enabled, and responds with a 403. The client
cannot continue, even though the server would have allowed
it to run if it had provided credentials.

It would be much better if the server responded with a 401,
asking for credentials during the initial contact. But
git-http-backend does not know about the server's auth
configuration (so a 401 would be confusing in the case of a
true anonymous server). Unfortunately, configuring Apache to
recognize the query string and apply the auth appropriately
to receive-pack (but not upload-pack) initial requests is
non-trivial.

The site admin can work around this by just turning on
http.receivepack explicitly in its repositories. Let's
document this workaround.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Jeff King 2013-04-10 23:32:11 -04:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent 5bda18c186
commit fdae191003

View File

@ -91,6 +91,15 @@ require authorization with a LocationMatch directive:
</LocationMatch>
----------------------------------------------------------------
+
In this mode, the server will not request authentication until the
client actually starts the object negotiation phase of the push, rather
than during the initial contact. For this reason, you must also enable
the `http.receivepack` config option in any repositories that should
accept a push. The default behavior, if `http.receivepack` is not set,
is to reject any pushes by unauthenticated users; the initial request
will therefore report `403 Forbidden` to the client, without even giving
an opportunity for authentication.
+
To require authentication for both reads and writes, use a Location
directive around the repository, or one of its parent directories:
+