How to setup a git lfs server at home?

Question

I am making use of git lfs for storage of large files in a github repository. The only problem is that there is a quota for git lfs; specifically you can only store 1 GB and only stream (download) 1 GB per month. After you run out of that, you must pay $5 for 5 more GB. This could become expensive.

I have an old PC I could boot Linux and port forward on.

Does anyone know how to setup a git lfs server at home rather than using Github's lfs built in CPU's?

Answer 1

There are a variety of implementations that you can use, and there's a reference server implementation you can use for testing or production use.

Answer 2

Starting with git-lfs version 2.10.0 (released 2020-01-21) it's now possible to git lfs push and fetch against bare repos on the local file system (i.e. with the remote URL set to file://... or even with /path/to/bare-repo.git).

For example:

git clone /path/to/local-git-repo.git
cd local-git-repo
echo 'hello world' > hello.txt
git lfs track '/hello.txt'
git add .

This will create a local .git/lfs/objects directory.

git commit -m 'Add, track LFS file'
git push

This will push lfs objects to /path/to/local-git-repo.git/lfs/objects.

You'll probably need to setup git lfs in your global config if it isn't there already.

git config --global filter.lfs.clean 'git-lfs clean -- %f'
git config --global filter.lfs.process 'git-lfs filter-process'
git config --global filter.lfs.required 'true'
git config --global filter.lfs.smudge 'git-lfs smudge -- %f'