How to configure Bitbucket Server for personal use?

[wojwenc]

I want to use Bitbucket Server locally on my PC, just for my personal use. Initially I wanted to use just Git, but I couldn't find any good LFS server implementations (which Bitbucket Server has). Since this isn't a typical usecase for the Bitbucket Server I have a few questions:

1. What's the point of installing it as a service? I know it's the recommended option, but I'm not sure if I should use it.
2. I already tried it out using the internal db and it works great, but it recommends using an external one. Is there any reason to use an external db if everything is on my PC anyway?
3. This one i a little bit more specific. I was watching this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs-AGesais8 and it says that I should enter my server name instead of localhost. I assume that you should do it only if you use a separate server? Can I use localhost if it's running on my PC?

[Caterina Curti]

Hi @wojwenc,

I'll reply to your questions later in this thread, but, considering your request of using Bitbucket for your personal use, would it make sense to use the Cloud offering of Atlassian instead of the self installed one (Bitbucket Server).

You can sign up at http://bitbucket.org/ for it and yes, it does support Git LFS:

- Use Git LFS with Bitbucket

This option also removes some of the complexity of the server setup and Git LFS is automatically enabled on any new repository (the client side steps are still required).

To your questions now:

1) A service allows you to automatically start an application when the server / PC restarts.

2) External databases are recommended for a variety of reasons. A couple of them is because they are more stable and less subject to data loss and inconsistencies. Also keep in mind that you should backup the data constantly and an external backup will help in this context as well. With the Cloud solution, it is up to us to make sure that there is no data loss.

3) As long as you are only cloning from your local PC, there is no need to set up any server name or proxy configuration in general.

Cheers,

Caterina - Atlassian

[wojwenc]

Hi, thanks for the reply! I'm using Bitbucket Server instead of Cloud because of the higher transfer speeds (I'm going to transfer a lot of big binary files). I already started setting up the external db a have a question, maybe you can help me out with this. I'm using PostrgreSQL and in your guide (https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/connecting-bitbucket-server-to-postgresql-776640389.html) you mention that I should use UTF-8 character set. Do I have to set collation to UTF-8 as well? It's really problematic to do on Windows, but I've seen this beeing recommended for your other products and I don't know if it's the case for Bitbucket Server. 

[Caterina Curti]

Ok @wojwenc!

For a PostgreSQL database only character set is needed. The default collation can be used for Bitbucket Server.