Hosting web pages on Alioth
With each Alioth project, you have a web space accessible at http://<project>.alioth.debian.org. The corresponding directory is /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/<project>/htdocs/.
There are numerous ways to install web pages there:
- login by SSH in alioth.debian.org, move into the directory and download the files with a program like scp (file transfer via SSH), rsync, ftp or wget (download files via HTTP).
scp <files> alioth.debian.org:/var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/<project>/htdocs/
- you can also use ftp to upload files but you should avoid that since passwords are sent in clear-text
Managing the website in a VCS system
Since all the VCS are hosted on Alioth, you can store your website in a VCS and have your website auto-update itself after a commit. You just have to configure a post-commit hook updating the files in /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/<project>/htdocs/.
Security concerns
PHP and CGI are enabled, so you can host web applications on your website. For security reasons, we prefer that you DO NOT host any web application unless you really need to. Consider alternatives, e.g. using (a subdir of) this Debian wiki instead of your own.
If you need a web application, please try to use an application that is packaged for the stable version of Debian and please ask the Alioth administrators to install it. This can include packages from http://www.backports.org/ where necessary.
Otherwise if you decide nevertheless to install a web application, please follow the rules below:
- check with the Alioth administrators that the installation you are performing is a reasonable thing to do
- do not put world-writable files/directories in the public "htdocs" or "cgi-bin" directory
- do not put files/directories writable by www-data in the public "htdocs" or "cgi-bin" directory
avoid world-writable files/directories and prefer using ACL to grant write-access to the www-data user (see man setfacl)
- you are responsible of keeping your web application current and secure
- move away / remove old web applications that you don't use any more
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