Setting up a home git server

Oct 4, 2025 - ⧖ 4 min

These are notes to my future self about setting up a home git server. The goal is to self-host a git server for personal projects, fun, and backing up all my git repos currently hosted on GitHub.

Infrastructure

Intel NUC, Core i5, 16GB
Proxmox 9.0 as hypervisor, codename pickle

root@pickle:~# fastfetch
         .://:`              `://:.             root@pickle
       `hMMMMMMd/          /dMMMMMMh`           -----------
        `sMMMMMMMd:      :mMMMMMMMs`            OS: Proxmox VE 9.0.3 x86_64
`-/+oo+/:`.yMMMMMMMh-  -hMMMMMMMy.`:/+oo+/-`    Host:  ()
`:oooooooo/`-hMMMMMMMyyMMMMMMMh-`/oooooooo:`    Kernel: Linux 6.14.8-2-pve
  `/oooooooo:`:mMMMMMMMMMMMMm:`:oooooooo/`      Uptime: 3 days, 22 hours, 9 mins
    ./ooooooo+- +NMMMMMMMMN+ -+ooooooo/.        Packages: 726 (dpkg)
      .+ooooooo+-`oNMMMMNo`-+ooooooo+.          Shell: bash 5.2.37
        -+ooooooo/.`sMMs`./ooooooo+-            Display (DELL P2715Q): 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz in 27" [External]
          :oooooooo/`..`/oooooooo:              Terminal: termproxy
          :oooooooo/`..`/oooooooo:              CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5250U (4) @ 2.70 GHz
        -+ooooooo/.`sMMs`./ooooooo+-            GPU: Intel HD Graphics 6000 @ 0.95 GHz [Integrated]
      .+ooooooo+-`oNMMMMNo`-+ooooooo+.          Memory: 2.72 GiB / 15.51 GiB (18%)
    ./ooooooo+- +NMMMMMMMMN+ -+ooooooo/.        Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
  `/oooooooo:`:mMMMMMMMMMMMMm:`:oooooooo/`      Disk (/): 3.35 GiB / 93.93 GiB (4%) - ext4
`:oooooooo/`-hMMMMMMMyyMMMMMMMh-`/oooooooo:`    Local IP (vmbr0): 192.168.0.111/24
`-/+oo+/:`.yMMMMMMMh-  -hMMMMMMMy.`:/+oo+/-`    Locale: en_US.UTF-8
        `sMMMMMMMm:      :dMMMMMMMs`
       `hMMMMMMd/          /dMMMMMMh`
         `://:`              `://:`

Debian 13 (trixie) VM as the git server: hostname gitserved
Tailscale on gitserved making a flat network connecting
- personal laptop
- desktop
- phone
- EC2 instance
- Backup server NAS
- gitserved

In the future I'll add an exit node VM, and a web server VM to the proxmox cluster.

Setup

Installing proxmox

flash usb drive w/ proxmox iso
boot the machine, use TUI install (graphical failed for some reason)
default settings, used ethernet as management interface

Note: the machine boots into headless mode, but can be ssh'd into at root@ the management interface or through the web interface, in this case http://192.168.0.111:8006. There's a pain here because the laptop is normall on the home wifi network which isn't bridged to the ethernet part due to lack of bridging features in the wifi mesh I have. So I have to do some initial setup with laptop plugged into ethernet.

Somehow, magically, when tailscale is up, I can route to the hypervisor, but the tailscale network is entirely separate so this baffles me.

Once proxmox is up and running and I've got access to the web management interface there are a couple of things to note

on left, under datacenter, clicking pickle gives a list of actions/options for the hypervisor, including a web shell, networking info, and repositories --> disable the ceph and enterprise ones so that the system scheduled apt update will work
under pickle, VM entries will appear with similar actions
prep a flash drive w/ debian and feed it to the NUC
Create a new VM:
- in proxmox, create VM, choose options, use "no OS", finish creation
- add a pass through for the USB device
- set the boot order to put USB first (not sure this is necessary, but the boot was getting stuck without it)
- start the VM
- install debian like a champ, call it gitserved
setup tailscale on gitserved: proxmox web interface, VNC to VM

Setting up the git server and backing up existing repositories

Stay tuned for the next installment...