I just had a funny moment with Git and Gitea. I'd set up a gitea instance in a regular looking username, I figured keep it and the reverse proxy in one box, and I'm getting this error since yesterday, just hadn't got everything tee'd up to run:

```

loki@brav0:~/src/l0k1.cc/git$ git clone loki@l0k1.cc:git/kozhik.git

Cloning into 'kozhik'...

fatal: 'git/kozhik.git' does not appear to be a git repository

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

and the repository exists.

```

As I am reading https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/git/does-not-appear-to-be-a-git-repository/ this jumped out at me:

> But if you are reaching out to a private server that does not have HTTP access available you have to change this syntax to include a server user with appropriate privilege. (This is why when setting up a private Git server it is a good idea to create a special “Git” user with access to the repository.)

>

> >git clone user@desination:/home/user/production.git

>

> Notice that unlike the HTTP variation from GitHub, this clone URL contains user@destination. The “user,” in this case, is a server user with access and privileges to interact with the Git repository on the server. The destination is the hostname, domain name, or IP address of the server you are trying to contact. Then, a colon (:) separates the user and server declaration from the file path.

And I was like... ohhhh... that literal path, l0k1.cc:git/kozhik.git doesn't exist. Note the lack of prefix `/` - this specifically means it's looking in the `$HOME` of the user `loki` ie: `/home/loki` and the fix was simple:

```

ln -s /home/loki/data/gitea-repositories/git git

```

Instantly, SSH logs in, tries to `cd` to `/home/loki/git/` and copy the directory `kozhik.git` and it works.

^_^

I told you today was gonna be a good day. Already learned how git SSH works by poking at it.