GitLab Omnibus project

This project creates full-stack platform-specific downloadable packages for GitLab. For other installation options please see the GitLab project README.

Installation

After the steps below your GitLab instance should reachable over HTTP, and have an admin user with username root and password 5iveL!fe.

Ubuntu 12.04

sudo apt-get install openssh-server
sudo apt-get install postfix # sendmail or exim is also OK
sudo dpkg -i gitlab-x.y.z.deb # this is the .deb you downloaded
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

CentOS 6.5

sudo yum install openssh-server
sudo yum install postfix # sendmail or exim is also OK
sudo rpm -i gitlab-x.y.z.rpm
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
# Open up the firewall for HTTP and SSH
sudo lokkit -s http -s ssh

For update instructions, see the update guide.

How to manage an Omnibus-installed GitLab

Start/stop GitLab

You can start, stop or restart GitLab and all of its components with the following commands.

# Start all GitLab components
sudo gitlab-ctl start

# Stop all GitLab components
sudo gitlab-ctl stop

# Restart all GitLab components
sudo gitlab-ctl restart

It is also possible to start, stop or restart individual components.

sudo gitlab-ctl restart unicorn

Creating the gitlab.rb configuration file

sudo mkdir -p /etc/gitlab
sudo touch /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
sudo chmod 600 /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

Configuring the external URL for GitLab

In order for GitLab to display correct repository clone links to your users it needs to know the URL under which it is reached by your users, e.g. http://gitlab.example.com. Add the following line to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

external_url "http://gitlab.example.com"

Run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure for the change to take effect.

Creating an application backup

To create a backup of your repositories and GitLab metadata, run the following command.

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

This will store a tar file in /var/opt/gitlab/backups. The filename will look like 1393513186_gitlab_backup.tar, where 1393513186 is a timestamp.

Scheduling a backup

To schedule a cron job that backs up your repositories and GitLab metadata, use the root user:

sudo su -
crontab -e

There, add the following line to schedule the backup for everyday at 2 AM:

0 2 * * * /opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

Restoring an application backup

We will assume that you have installed GitLab from an omnibus package and run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure at least once.

First make sure your backup tar file is in /var/opt/gitlab/backups.

sudo cp 1393513186_gitlab_backup.tar /var/opt/gitlab/backups/

Next, restore the backup by running the restore command. You need to specify the timestamp of the backup you are restoring.

# This command will overwrite the contents of your GitLab database!
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore BACKUP=1393513186

If there is a GitLab version mismatch between your backup tar file and the installed version of GitLab, the restore command will abort with an error. Install a package for the required version and try again.

Invoking Rake tasks

To invoke a GitLab Rake task, use gitlab-rake. For example:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check

Contrary to with a traditional GitLab installation, 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 to.
• /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.

Storing Git data in an alternative directory

By default, omnibus-gitlab stores Git repository data in /var/opt/gitlab/git-data. You can change this location by adding the following line to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb.

git_data_dir "/mnt/nas/git-data"

Run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure for the change to take effect.

Setting up LDAP sign-in

If you have an LDAP directory service such as Active Directory, you can configure GitLab so that your users can sign in with their LDAP credentials. Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, edited for your server.

# These settings are documented in more detail at
# https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/config/gitlab.yml.example#L118
gitlab_rails['ldap_enabled'] = true
gitlab_rails['ldap_host'] = 'hostname of LDAP server'
gitlab_rails['ldap_port'] = 389
gitlab_rails['ldap_uid'] = 'sAMAccountName'
gitlab_rails['ldap_method'] = 'plain' # 'ssl' or 'plain'
gitlab_rails['ldap_bind_dn'] = 'CN=query user,CN=Users,DC=mycorp,DC=com'
gitlab_rails['ldap_password'] = 'query user password'
gitlab_rails['ldap_allow_username_or_email_login'] = true
gitlab_rails['ldap_base'] = 'DC=mycorp,DC=com'

# GitLab Enterprise Edition only
gitlab_rails['ldap_group_base'] = '' # Example: 'OU=groups,DC=mycorp,DC=com'
gitlab_rails['ldap_user_filter'] = '' # Example: '(memberOf=CN=my department,OU=groups,DC=mycorp,DC=com)'

Run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure for the LDAP settings to take effect.

Building your own package

See the separate build documentation.

Acknowledgments

This omnibus installer project is based on the awesome work done by Chef in omnibus-chef-server.