Re: Migrating Repository without Network

[Konstantin Khomoutov <kostix@bswap.ru>]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 10:21:52AM -0400, Dennis Putnam wrote:

> I have a server with a git repository whose NIC is no longer working. I need
> to migrate that repository to a new server using a flash drive. I can only
> find instructions for migrating when both servers have network access. Can
> someone tell me how to do a migration without using a network? TIA.

Note that Git repositories - both "bare" which are typical for servers [1] -
and "normal" - which usually get created when the folks clone repositories
from centralized locations, are self-containing, so what you should do is to
just physcally copy the directory with the repository to the flash drive,
recursively. Then make sure you have another copy of it, just in case you'll
screw something later.

Then, once you have the repository on the flash drive, what to do heavily
depends on how the access to that repository was provided - simply because
there are many ways to do that - say, via SSH with several real system
accounts, via SSH with a single "virtual" user, via HTTP[S] with the
authentication provided by the mediating web server, and so on; it is also
possible to combine these ways of access. It is also possible that the repo
is under the control of some turn-key solution such as GitLab, Gitea etc.
So, in the end, what to do next depends on what setup *around* that Git repo
you have right now.

In either case, it will be possible to fetch all the data from the repo saved
on the flash drive: it might be not exactly obvious but all Git commands which
fetch data - such as "clone", "fetch" etc - do understand "plain" pathnames
such as /the/path/to/the/repo and URLs with the special scheme "file://" -
such as file:///the/path/to/the/repo, allowing them to work with on-disk repos
available locally such as on a mounted flash drive.

 1. https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server