forgejo

Self-hosted Forgejo git server for archiving GitHub repos and mirroring active ones. Runs on a single EC2 instance within the Sea Haven VPC, fronted by the seahaven-com ALB for HTTPS.

Architecture

• EC2: t4g.small (arm64), Amazon Linux 2023, 50GB gp3 EBS — instance i-0d3005fb3c36124cd
• Network: Private subnet (us-east-1a), behind seahaven-com ALB for SSL termination
• DNS: forgejo.seahaven.com — Route53 alias record pointing to the seahaven-com ALB (not a direct A record)
• TLS: Wildcard cert on ALB, HTTP internally on port 3000
• Backup: Nightly forgejo dump to S3 + EBS snapshots via DLM (see S3 Backups)
• Admin access: SSM Session Manager (no SSH port exposed)
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions with OIDC role githubdeploy-forgejo

Ports

Port	Protocol	Source	Purpose
443	HTTPS	ALB (public)	Web UI + HTTP git clone
3000	HTTP	ALB → instance	Internal traffic from ALB
2222	SSH	VPC + VPN	Git SSH operations

S3 Backups

A nightly forgejo dump runs at 5:00 UTC and uploads the archive to s3://forgejo-backups-328440206208.

S3 lifecycle policy:

Phase	Duration
Standard	First 30 days
Glacier	Days 31–365
Expired	After 365 days

EBS snapshots are managed separately by DLM and run nightly at 6:00 UTC with a 7-day retention window.

To test the backup manually:

sudo /usr/local/bin/forgejo-backup.sh

Autodiscovery

An hourly cron job checks the Sea-Haven-Industries GitHub org for new repositories and mirrors them into Forgejo automatically.

• Active repos are created as mirrors (ongoing sync).
• Archived repos are created as static one-time imports.
• Script: /usr/local/bin/forgejo-autodiscover.sh
• Log: /var/log/forgejo-autodiscover.log

Token Refresh

A daily cron at 4:30 UTC reads the GitHub PAT from Secrets Manager (forgejo/github-pat) and updates the git remote URL on every mirror repository so credentials stay current.

• Script: /usr/local/bin/forgejo-refresh-tokens.sh

PAT Rotation

The GitHub personal access token used for mirroring is a fine-grained PAT scoped to Sea-Haven-Industries with Contents: Read-only permissions and a 1-year expiration. It is stored in Secrets Manager at forgejo/github-pat.

To rotate:

1. Create a new fine-grained PAT on GitHub with the same scope.
2. Update the secret value in Secrets Manager (forgejo/github-pat).
3. The daily token-refresh cron will pick it up automatically.

To force immediate propagation:

sudo /usr/local/bin/forgejo-refresh-tokens.sh

Secrets Manager

Secret	Purpose
forgejo/admin-password	Forgejo admin user password
forgejo/api-token	Forgejo API token (used by autodiscovery and token refresh scripts)
forgejo/github-pat	GitHub fine-grained PAT for mirroring

First-time setup

After the stack deploys, connect via SSM and create the admin user:

aws ssm start-session --target i-0d3005fb3c36124cd

sudo -u forgejo /usr/local/bin/forgejo admin user create \
  --admin \
  --username adam \
  --password '<password>' \
  --email adam@seahavenind.com \
  --config /etc/forgejo/app.ini

Admin password is stored in Secrets Manager at forgejo/admin-password.

Access the web UI at https://forgejo.seahaven.com.

Migrating repos from GitHub

Archived repos (one-time import)

In the Forgejo web UI: New Migration → GitHub → paste the GitHub repo URL. Use a GitHub personal access token for private repos. These are full imports (code, issues, PRs, releases).

Active repos (mirror sync)

Same migration flow, but check This Repository Will Be A Mirror. Forgejo polls GitHub hourly (DEFAULT_INTERVAL = 1h in app.ini) and keeps the mirror in sync.

Deployment

npm install
npx cdk deploy

CI/CD is handled by GitHub Actions — PRs run CI, merges to main deploy via the reusable CDK workflow.

Updating Forgejo

Update the FORGEJO_VERSION constant in lib/forgejo-stack.ts and deploy. This replaces the instance, so ensure the latest EBS snapshot is available for data recovery if needed. Alternatively, update in-place via SSM:

aws ssm start-session --target i-0d3005fb3c36124cd

sudo systemctl stop forgejo
sudo curl -Lo /usr/local/bin/forgejo "https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/releases/download/v<NEW_VERSION>/forgejo-<NEW_VERSION>-linux-arm64"
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/forgejo
sudo systemctl start forgejo