Gitolit through a password instead of a key

Question

Is there a way to get GitoLite to work with passwords rather than using public + private keys? For example, to make it possible for a user to clone a repository only through his own gitolit password, confirming his identity, and not by creating a key pair for this.

Answer 1

No. The whole point of githolite is that it uses key pairs to determine the identity, so that it can manage users, rather than manage them in the system.

You can bypass gitolite by giving some users access to the repository files and linking them directly using ssh (and authenticate using your selection method, such as passwords), but this will really bypass it. Gitolite will no longer be able to perform all its bizarre things, namely to check whether this user is allowed to perform this operation.

Answer 2

Password authentication is possible with githolite. Let them say that user X is authenticated using a password. The workaround is that you need to create a custom script that acts as a wrapper for user X. the script redirects git commands to gitolite user using key authentication. The next step is to create a key pair for the user account X and add the public key to the gitolite admin key.

Here is a link that explains all this.