Gitea Repository Migration Guide

This guide explains how to migrate your existing Git repositories from /home/mleku/Documents/github to your Gitea installation.

Prerequisites

1. Gitea is installed and running on your VPS (use giteainstall.sh)
2. You have completed the Gitea setup wizard and created an admin account
3. SSH access to your VPS (if migrating to remote server)
4. Git is installed on your local machine

Step 1: Generate Gitea API Token

1. Log in to your Gitea instance at http://your-vps-ip:3000
2. Click on your avatar → Settings
3. Navigate to Applications → Manage Access Tokens
4. Click Generate New Token
5. Give it a name (e.g., "migration")
6. Select the following scopes:

- read:repository - write:repository - read:user - write:user - Or simply select all scopes for convenience

1. Click Generate Token
2. Copy the token (you won't be able to see it again!)

Step 2: Configure Environment Variables

On your local machine (where the repositories are), set up the configuration:

# Gitea API token (required)
export GITEA_TOKEN="your-token-here"

# Gitea URL (update with your VPS IP or domain)
export GITEA_URL="http://your-vps-ip:3000"

# VPS SSH connection (if migrating to remote server)
# Format: user@hostname or user@ip
export VPS_HOST="mleku@your-vps-ip"

# Source directory (default is /home/mleku/Documents/github)
export SOURCE_DIR="/home/mleku/Documents/github"

For Local Gitea Installation

If Gitea is installed locally (on the same machine as the repos):

export GITEA_TOKEN="your-token-here"
export GITEA_URL="http://localhost:3000"
# Don't set VPS_HOST

Step 3: Test with Dry Run

Before actually migrating, do a dry run to see what would happen:

DRY_RUN=true ./scripts/gitea-migrate-repos.sh

This will:

• Check connectivity to Gitea
• List all repositories to be migrated
• Show what would be created
• Not make any actual changes

Step 4: Run the Migration

Once you've verified the dry run looks good:

./scripts/gitea-migrate-repos.sh

The script will:

1. Connect to Gitea and verify your token
2. Scan for all Git repositories in the source directory
3. Ask for confirmation before proceeding
4. For each repository:

- Check if it already exists in Gitea - Create the repository via API (if it doesn't exist) - Push all branches and tags to Gitea - Report success or failure

1. Display a summary at the end

Step 5: Verify Migration

After the migration completes:

1. Visit your Gitea instance: http://your-vps-ip:3000
2. Check that all repositories are visible
3. Browse a few repositories to verify the content
4. Check that branches and tags were migrated

Configuration Options

The script supports several environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default	Required
GITEA_TOKEN	Gitea API token	-	Yes
GITEA_URL	Gitea server URL	http://localhost:3000	No
VPS_HOST	SSH host for VPS	-	No (if local)
SOURCE_DIR	Source repo directory	/home/mleku/Documents/github	No
DRY_RUN	Dry run mode	false	No

SSH Configuration for Remote VPS

If migrating to a remote VPS, ensure SSH access is configured:

# Test SSH connection
ssh mleku@your-vps-ip

# Set up SSH key if not already done
ssh-copy-id mleku@your-vps-ip

SSH Port Configuration

By default, Gitea uses SSH port 2222 (to avoid conflicts with system SSH on port 22).

If you need to use a different SSH port, you'll need to:

1. Update Gitea configuration in /home/mleku/gitea/custom/conf/app.ini:

`ini [server] SSHLISTENPORT = 2222 # Change this to your preferred port `

1. Restart Gitea:

`bash sudo systemctl restart gitea `

Troubleshooting

"Cannot connect to Gitea"

• Check that Gitea is running: sudo systemctl status gitea
• Verify the URL is correct
• Check firewall rules if accessing remotely

"Invalid Gitea token"

• Regenerate the token in Gitea settings
• Make sure you copied the entire token
• Verify the token has the necessary scopes

"Failed to push"

• Check SSH connectivity: ssh -p 2222 mleku@your-vps-ip
• Verify SSH keys are set up correctly
• Check Gitea logs: sudo journalctl -u gitea -f

"Repository already exists"

The script will skip repositories that already exist. You can:

• Answer "y" when prompted to push updates to existing repos
• Delete the repo in Gitea and run the script again
• Manually push updates using git

Example: Complete Migration

Here's a complete example for migrating to a VPS:

# 1. Set up environment
export GITEA_TOKEN="a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9j0"
export GITEA_URL="http://192.168.1.100:3000"
export VPS_HOST="mleku@192.168.1.100"

# 2. Test connection and do dry run
DRY_RUN=true ./scripts/gitea-migrate-repos.sh

# 3. Review output, then run actual migration
./scripts/gitea-migrate-repos.sh

# 4. Confirm when prompted
# Press 'y' to continue

# 5. Wait for migration to complete
# The script will show progress for each repository

# 6. Review summary
# Check for any failures and investigate

Post-Migration

After successful migration:

1. Update remote URLs in your local development repositories:

`bash cd /home/mleku/Documents/github/your-repo git remote set-url origin http://your-vps-ip:3000/mleku/your-repo.git `

1. Set up SSH URLs for password-less push (recommended):

`bash git remote set-url origin ssh://mleku@your-vps-ip:2222/mleku/your-repo.git `

1. Test push/pull:

`bash git pull origin main git push origin main `

Statistics

Your migration includes:

• 86 repositories found in /home/mleku/Documents/github
• All branches will be migrated
• All tags will be migrated
• Repository descriptions will be extracted from README.md or .git/description

Support

If you encounter issues:

1. Check Gitea logs: sudo journalctl -u gitea -f
2. Enable verbose Git output: GIT_TRACE=1 ./scripts/gitea-migrate-repos.sh
3. Check the script output for specific error messages