Multiple simultaneous requests with git-http-backend on NGINX fastcgi proxy

Question

I have git-http-backend serving git repos through an nginx fastcgi proxy. The nginx config looks like:

server {
    listen               443 ssl;
    server_name          git.example.com;

    auth_basic           "Git Access";
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd_git;
    error_log            /var/log/nginx-git-error.log;
    access_log           /var/log/nginx-git-access.log;
    client_max_body_size 0;

    root /var/git/;

    location ~ /git(/.*) {

        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
        include       fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME     /usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend;
        fastcgi_param GIT_PROJECT_ROOT    /var/git;
        fastcgi_param REMOTE_USER         $remote_user;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO           $1;
        fastcgi_read_timeout              600;
    }
}

From testing, it seems like if there is more than one request at a time, the proxy will fail (with code 504), and some googling seems to confirm my suspicion that git-http-backend cannot support multiple requests.

How do I set this up so that multiple requests to the git repo can be made at once?

Answer 1

I recently ran into the same situation and quickly found this script on github

It spawns a new git-http-backend instance for every new http request to it. Compile it (needs go language to be installed) via

go build git-http-multi-backend.go

And run it with

./git-http-multi-backend -r /Path/To/Repos

This will make it listen on:80 (port can be changed). You now simply change your nginx config to something like

location ~ /git(/.*) {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:80;
}

I do admit, that this is not the most elegant solution, since it should be definitely possible to achieve the same just via fiddling around with the nginx config. The author of the git-http-multi-backend tool even speaks about it but lacks any specific implementation example.

Answer 2

And I just found another solution, which is even more simple than my previous solution with git-http-multi-backend

You need to increase the maximum amount of FCGI_CHILDREN, which can be spawned.

In my case, I edited /etc/init.d/fcgiwrap and set FCGI_CHILDREN to eg 3. Now, I can check out/clone/push 3 repos at once.