# NAME

git-annex initremote - creates a special (non-git) remote

# SYNOPSIS

git annex initremote `name type=value [param=value ...]`

# DESCRIPTION

Creates a new special remote, and adds it to `.git/config`.

Example Amazon S3 remote:
  
	git annex initremote mys3 type=S3 encryption=hybrid keyid=me@example.com datacenter=EU

Many different types of special remotes are supported by git-annex.
For a list and details, see <https://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/>
 
The remote's configuration is specified by the parameters passed
to this command. Different types of special remotes need different
configuration values. The command will prompt for parameters as needed.

All special remotes support encryption. You can either specify
`encryption=none` to disable encryption, or specify
`encryption=hybrid keyid=$keyid ...` to specify a GPG key id (or an email
address associated with a key).

There are actually three schemes that can be used for management of the
encryption keys. When using the encryption=hybrid scheme, additional
GPG keys can be given access to the encrypted special remote easily
(without re-encrypting everything). When using encryption=shared,
a shared key is generated and stored in the git repository, allowing
anyone who can clone the git repository to access it. Finally, when using
encryption=pubkey, content in the special remote is directly encrypted
to the specified GPG keys, and additional ones cannot easily be given
access.

If you anticipate using the new special remote in other clones of the
repository, you can pass "autoenable=true". Then when [[git-annex-init]](1)
is run in a new clone, it will attempt to enable the special remote. Of
course, this works best when the special remote does not need anything
special to be done to get it enabled.

# OPTIONS

* `--fast`

  When initializing a remote that uses encryption, a cryptographic key is
  created. This requires sufficient entropy. If initremote seems to hang
  or take a long time while generating the key, you may want to Ctrl-c it
  and re-run with `--fast`, which causes it to use a lower-quality source of
  randomness. (Ie, /dev/urandom instead of /dev/random)

# SEE ALSO

[[git-annex]](1)

[[git-annex-enableremote]](1)

# AUTHOR

Joey Hess <id@joeyh.name>

Warning: Automatically converted into a man page by mdwn2man. Edit with care.