viewgit permission issue on Ubuntu

Question

I installed Gitosis and Viewgit on an Ubuntu Server. Git and Gitosis work just fine. Though when I try to open /viewgit interface in my browser I get an error:

viewgit/inc/functions.php:66 file_get_contents(/var/git/repositories/test.git/description): failed to open stream: Permission denied [2]

An ls -l gives me following:

root@***:/var/git/repositories# ls -l
drwxr-x--- 8 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:26 gitosis-admin.git
drwxr-x--- 7 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 test.git

cd test.git

root@***:/var/git/repositories/test.git# ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 branches
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git   66 12. Okt 22:36 config
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git   18 12. Okt 22:36 description
-rw-r--r-- 1 git git   23 12. Okt 22:36 HEAD
drwxr-xr-x 2 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 hooks
drwxr-xr-x 2 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 info
drwxr-xr-x 4 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 objects
drwxr-xr-x 4 git git 4096 12. Okt 22:36 refs

Users and Groups are always git:git. Any idea? Is it that I have to add the www-data user? I am not a very experienced Ubuntu user, but I keep trying.

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EDIT: I made a chmod 777 onto description and now it works fine. Is that the way to go?

Answer 1

The web server has no rights to enter the repo directories. Giving the "others" the read and execute rights on test.git will also solve the problem, so:

chmod o+rx test.git

should do the job. Setting 777 also gives write rights to everybody which is generally a bad idea on a web server, or any server for that matter.