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 This project creates full-stack platform-specific packages for
 GitLab!
 
+## How to manage an Omnibus-installed GitLab
+
+### Administrative commands
+
+You can make configuration changes by editing `/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb` and
+`/etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json`, followed by running
+
+```
+sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
+```
+
+To start/stop a component of GitLab, run e.g.
+`sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq`. To permanently disable e.g. Sidekiq, add
+`sidekiq['enable'] = false` to `/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb`, and run
+`sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure` for the change to take effect.
+
+To invoke a GitLab rake task, use `gitlab-rake`. For example:
+
+```
+sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create
+```
+
+There is no need to change the user or the `RAILS_ENV` environment variable;
+this is taken care of by the `gitlab-rake` wrapper script.
+
+### Directory structure
+
+Omnibus-gitlab uses four different directories.
+
+- `/opt/gitlab` holds application code for GitLab and its dependencies.
+- `/var/opt/gitlab` holds application data and configuration files that
+  `gitlab-ctl reconfigure` writes too.
+- `/etc/gitlab` holds configuration files for omnibus-gitlab. These are
+  the only files that you should ever have to edit manually.
+- `/var/log/gitlab` contains all log data generated by components of
+  omnibus-gitlab.
+
 ## Preparing a build environment on Ubuntu 12.04
 
 To create builds you will need a build user (`ubuntu:ubuntu` in our example).
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libgit2 0.21.2