I’ve been maintaining self-host GitLab instances for a few years. gitlab-ce is fully dockerized, you can easily deploy a GitLab container within a few minutes.

Here’s my cookbook.

Prerequisites

To deploy a gitlab-ce container/instance, you must be familiar with the following techs and tools:

A server and a domain will be required in this tutorial. Prepare your cloud resources before you begin.

Install Docker

You can install docker on almost all modern Linux distribution. Please follow the official guide to install docker-engine on your sever.

To manage your docker deployment, you will also need docker-compose, please follow the official guide to install it.

If you happen to use a ubuntu server, I have a script to install it which is based on official guide(ubuntu) and can save your time significantly.

1
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ShinChven/mirrors/master/docker/install.sh | bash -

Deploy GitLab Via docker-compose

Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. To manage GitLab’s configuration and variables with docker-compose is one of the best practice.

The docker-compose.yml

To begin with, let’s mkdir for your deployment project.

Then create a file named docker-compose.yml in your project directory.

A docker virtual network will be created by the directory name once you execute docker-compose up.

docker-compose.yml
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
web:
  image: 'gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest' # Use offical image https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce/
  restart: always
  hostname: 'hostname.example.com'
  container_name: gitlab # Container name
  environment:
    # Configure your GitLab https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/README.html
    GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
      # url config
      external_url 'https://hostname.example.com'
      # time zone
      gitlab_rails['time_zone'] = 'Beijing'
      # backup https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/backups.html
      gitlab_rails['backup_keep_time'] = 604800
      # remote backup https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/backup_restore.html#uploading-backups-to-a-remote-cloud-storage
      # aliyun remote backup configuration (in my case)
      gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
        'provider' => 'aliyun',
        'aliyun_accesskey_id' => '<your_accesskey_id>',
        'aliyun_accesskey_secret' => '<your_accesskey_secret',
        'aliyun_oss_endpoint' => 'http://end_point.aliyuncs.com',
        'aliyun_oss_bucket' => 'bunket_name',
        'aliyun_oss_location' => 'location'
      }
      gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = 'gitlab'
      # stmp/email https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/smtp.html
      gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true
      gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = 'smtp.mail.example.com'
      gitlab_rails['smtp_port'] = 465
      gitlab_rails['smtp_user_name'] = '[email protected]'
      gitlab_rails['smtp_password'] = 'your_email_password'
      gitlab_rails['smtp_authentication'] = 'login'
      gitlab_rails['smtp_enable_starttls_auto'] = true
      gitlab_rails['smtp_tls'] = true
      gitlab_rails['gitlab_email_from'] = '[email protected]'
      # In order to use external nginx and certbot, I disabled the nginx in container
      nginx['listen_port'] = 80
      nginx['listen_https'] = false
      # Force https
      # If your https is not correctly configured in host machine, you will not be able to visit your gitlab as all requests to port 80 is forwarded to port 443, but nothing is listening on 443.
      nginx['proxy_set_headers'] = {
        "X-Forwarded-Proto" => "https",
        "X-Forwarded-Ssl" => "on"
      }
  # mapping container's port to host
  ports:
    - '10080:80' # curl 127.0.0.1:10080 to see your 
    - '10443:443'
    - '10022:22'
  volumes:
    - '<host_path_for_gitlab>/config:/etc/gitlab'
    - '<host_path_for_gitlab>/log:/var/log/gitlab'
    - '<host_path_for_gitlab>/data:/var/opt/gitlab'

docker-compose up

Once your docker-compose.yml is created, run the following commands in your project directory to deploy your gitlab-ce container:

1
docker-compose up -d
  • docker-compose up will execute your docker-compose.yml.
  • -d Detached mode: Run containers in the background.

Check status

After container is created, use the docker ps command to see the container’s status.

1
docker ps | grep 'gitlab'

See GitLab container’s status

STATUS EXPLAIN
Up Starting, you may see 502 error, please wait for GitLab finish starting.
Up Boot finished.
Up Some error occurred.

Serve GitLab Behind A Nginx Reverse Proxy

In order to share the server’s 80/443 port with other web app and manage SSL via certbot, you should consider serving GitLab behind a reverse proxy, that’s why I disabled the nginx inside the container and left the job to host machine’s nginx instance.

DNS

Add a DNS record to point your domain to your server, and make sure port 80 and 443 is open in your server’s firewall.

Once DNS is done, we can get onto nginx.

Nginx Configuration

Nginx is often preinstalled, create a simple nginx reverse proxy conf file to serve GitLab.

1
vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/gitlab.conf
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
server {
    # bind domain
    listen 80;
    server_name <YOUR_DOMAIN>; # configure your domain
    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:10080/; # proxy to the docker instance
    }
    # logs
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/gitlab_access.log;
    error_log   /var/log/nginx/gitlab_error.log;
}

Test Nginx Configuration

1
nginx -t

If everything is fine, terminal should return:

1
2
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

**If something is wrong, please check your configuration before proceed! **

Reload Nginx Configuration

1
nginx -s reload

The reverse proxy configuration is not finished since GitLab is configured to forward all requests to 80 to 443. SSL must be setup.

Let’s Encrypt! (Certbot/SSL)

Normally a SSL certificate must be purchased from issuer, but Let’s Encrypt! is free and automated.

Install Certbot

certbot is the commandline tool for Let’s Encrypt, please install it with it’s nginx plugin by following the official guide.

If you happen to use Ubuntu 20.04, installation is simple according to Digital Ocean‘s guide:

1
2
# https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-nginx-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-20-04
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Deploy SSL via Certbot

Run certbot, terminal will show your nginx configuration:

1
certbot

Then select your domain by input it’s number.

If the SSL certificate is successfully deployed, choose direct all request to https.

Done.

Finish Up

By now your GitLab is deployed as a docker container and is served behind a reverse proxy via https.
However, there are still a few things you should do.

Back up Secrets

IMPORTANT!

If your GitLab instance is used for production, you should backup your GitLab’s config directory once deployed.
If gitlab-secrets.json is missing, you will see malfunctions after you restored or migrated your GitLab.
To find GitLab’s config directory in your host machine, please see volumes in your docker-compose.yml.

Back up Data

run
1
2
3
docker exec -it \ # execute command inside container https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/exec/
gitlab \ # container name
/opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create # command to run inside container

See docker-compose.yml‘s volume mapping for path of data, backup files will be in data/backups

Back up Data Automatically

It is advised to set up a cron jobs in host machine to back up your GitLab’s data:

create a cron job
1
crontab -e
1
30 23 * * * docker exec gitlab /opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

Upgrade GitLab

If you intend to use GitLab in production, please follow it’s version up. When your instance is behind too many major versions to the current release, you may see errors during upgrading an old instance.

To upgrade a dockerized GitLab is simple. Navigate to your docker-compose project directory, and run the following codes:

1
2
docker pull gitlab/gitlab-ce # pull latest image
docker-compose up -d

Restore

1
docker exec -it <GITLAB_CONTAINER_NAME> gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=<BACK_UP_FILENAME>