Git repository - how do I clone /home/user/.git

Question

I've got a website on a VPS and I'd like to create an offline clone using Git.

So what I did on my VPS:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "comment"

Which created a .git folder. I am not sure now how I am supposed to continue in order to clone the git repository to my local machine.

I've tried using: git clone ssh://user@IP/home/user/.git but I get the following messages:

fatal: '/home/user/.git' does not appear to be a git repository 
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Can you please let me know what I am missing here?

To clone the repo you need to indicate the path to the project and not the path to the .git folder — Joël Salamin
– Joël Salamin, Commented May 5, 2015 at 9:36
@JoëlSalamin So instead of /home/user/.git just /home/user/ ? Because that didn't work either. Unless you mean something else.. — user3096206
– user3096206, Commented May 5, 2015 at 9:41
all you need is one command, git clone ssh://[email protected]:port/remote/dir/public_html /home/user/local/dir — Garry
– Garry, Commented May 5, 2015 at 9:42
possible duplicate of Git "does not appear to be a git repository" — Joe
– Joe, Commented May 5, 2015 at 11:25

Chris Maes · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-05 14:27:12Z

4

you should just "ignore" the existence of the .git directory:

git clone ssh://user@IP:/home/user/

should do the trick (if ssh user@IP works of course).

NOTE: not sure it's a good idea to make your whole "user" directory a git repository. using a subdirectory is probably a good idea.

EDIT: in this case file permissions were also an issue in copying files from a linux pc to a windows pc...

edited May 5, 2015 at 14:27

answered May 5, 2015 at 9:40

Chris Maes

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5 Comments

user3096206 Over a year ago

Hello Chris, doing this I still get the same error fatal: '/home/user/' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: Could not read from remote repository. I've also got .gitignore to ignore everything but public_html which I want to copy

Chris Maes Over a year ago

in which directory did you do the git init command? I suppose in /home/user/ ?

user3096206 Over a year ago

Yes, I did it on /home/user/ and the .git folder is under there. I've also checked ssh which works.

Chris Maes Over a year ago

then I suggest you to try it out locally first: create a temporary dir; make it a git repository; and clone it to another directory; check if that works...

Chris Maes Over a year ago

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

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