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Cloning a Remote GitHub Repository

Working with remote Git repositories is a key concept in distributed source control. Github is one of the most popular public repository sites and you will find yourself working with it regularly. At the completion of this activity, the student will understand how to clone a remote repository from GitHub for use locally.

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Path Info

Level
Clock icon Beginner
Duration
Clock icon 45m
Last updated
Clock icon Sep 03, 2025

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Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Create Local Repository Location

    The student is asked to create a world read/write/executable directory called /mnt/baserepo to contain a cloned repository. This can be accomplished when logged in as the 'cloud_user' with the following commands:

    sudo mkdir /mnt/baserepo

sudo chmod 777 /mnt/baserepo
OR
sudo chmod a+rwx /mnt/baserepo

  2. Challenge

    Clone Remote Repository to Local Location

    You are asked to clone a remote repository at https://github.com/linuxacademy/content-source-control-git.git into the recently created /mnt/baserepo directory. This cloning can be completed with the command:

    cd /mnt/baserepo

git clone https://github.com/linuxacademy/content-source-control-git.git .

    Note: In this case the '.' is very important since it will clone the repo contents in the /mnt/baserepo directory. Without it, it would clone the repo in a new directory matching the repository name.

  3. Challenge

    Clones of LOCAL Repository Made for Service Account

    The student is asked to make a clone of the repository, but use the LOCAL repository as the repository to base the user clone on. This is done by adding a special flag to the clones so it points to the local origination rather than the remote. This is done via:

    mkdir experiment
cd experiment

git clone --local /mnt/baserepo .

    NOTE: It is important to use the '.' in the cloning so that a new subdirectory is not created.

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