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GitLab is a free git repository management application based on Ruby on Rails. It is an interesting alternative if you want to host your own git repositories, since third-party hosting is not always the best option when writing private or closed-source software.

GitLab provides a .deb package which contains GitLab Community Edition and all its dependencies (Ruby, PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx, Unicorn and other gems) already compiled. Installing this package is straightforward. But since it will install its own package dependencies (Nginx, PostgreSQL, etc), this installation method is suitable if the server is dedicated only to managing git repositories. If you want GitLab to use your existing resources (i.e: you already have Nginx and PostgreSQL installed), you need to install GitLab manually.

This guide will help you install and configure GitLab on your Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) Linode. We will be using the latest Ruby and GitLab as of this writing, so check for the latest version. We will assume that you want to install GitLab on git.example.com and you have configured the DNS properly. If you are new to Linux system administration, you might want to consider the Introduction to Linux Concepts guide and Linux Administration Basics guide guides.

This guide is written for non-root users. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you are not familiar with the sudo command, you can check out our Users and Groups guide.

System Requirements

GitLab is a large and heavy application. To get the most of GitLab, the recommended hardware is as follows:

CPU: 2 cores to support up to 500 users.Memory: 2 GB to support up to 500 users.Prepare System for Deployment

Before beginning with the GitLab installation, make sure that your system’s package database is up to date and that all installed software is running the latest version.

Update your system by issuing the following commands from your shell:

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 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get upgrade

Also create a git user for GitLab:

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 sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos 'GitLab' git

Install Package Dependencies

In this section you will install the development tools and the required packages for GitLab.

Install the required packages to compile Ruby and native extensions to Ruby gems:

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 sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake zlib1g-dev libyaml-dev libssl-dev libgdbm-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev curl openssh-server redis-server checkinstall libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libicu-dev logrotate

Install Git:

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 sudo apt-get install git

In order to receive mail notifications, you need to install a mail server. Issue the following command to install Postfix mail server:

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 sudo apt-get install postfix

Select Internet site and enter your hostname to complete the installation. If you need to set up a complete SMTP/IMAP/POP3 server, refer to the Email with Postfix, Dovecot, and MySQL guide.

Install Ruby

While GitLab is a Ruby on Rails application, using ruby version managers such as RVM and rbenvis not supported. For example, GitLab shell is called from OpenSSH and having a version manager can prevent pushing and pulling over SSH. Thus GitLab can only work with system-wide Ruby installation. In addition, GitLab requires Ruby 2.0 or higher while the default version on Ubuntu 14.04 is 1.9.3.

Remove the old Ruby if present:

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 sudo apt-get remove ruby

The current stable Ruby version as of this writing is 2.1.2. To install Ruby, download the source code and compile the package:

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 mkdir /tmp/ruby && cd /tmp/ruby
 wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.1/ruby-2.1.2.tar.gz 
 tar xvzf ruby-2.1.2.tar.gz
 cd ruby-2.1.2
 ./configure --disable-install-rdoc --prefix=/usr/local
 make
 sudo make install

Check if the installation succeed by checking the Ruby version:

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 ruby -v

Setup PostgreSQL Database for GitLab

GitLab supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL for the database backend, but the latter is recommended. GitLab requires PostgreSQL version 9.1 or higher since it needs to make use of extensions.

Install PostgreSQL if you haven’t installed it:

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 sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client libpq-dev

Create new database and new user by issuing the following commands:

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 sudo -u postgres createuser --createdb git
 sudo -u postgres createdb --owner=git gitlabhq_production

Try connecting to the new database with the new user and display PostgreSQL version for testing:

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 sudo -u git -H psql -d gitlabhq_production -c "SELECT VERSION()"

If everything is ok, you should see the PostgreSQL version displayed on the console like this:

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                                                version                                                
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  PostgreSQL 9.3.4 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Ubuntu 4.8.2-16ubuntu6) 4.8.2, 64-bit
 (1 row)

Install GitLab

In this section you will install GitLab and make some configuration changes.

We will install GitLab into home directory of the user git. Change the current working directory:

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 cd /home/git

Download the GitLab source:

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 sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git -b 6-9-stable gitlab
 cd gitlab

The command above will download the 6-9-stable branch from the GitLab repository. Feel free to select other stable branches, but never install the master branch on a production server.

Create the GitLab config file:

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 sudo -u git -H cp config/gitlab.yml.example config/gitlab.yml

Open the file:

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 sudo nano config/gitlab.yml

You need to change the value of host to the fully-qualified domain of your server. Also set the email_from and support_email to the email addresses intended for GitLab.

/home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml

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production: &base
  gitlab:
    host: git.example.com 
    port: 80
    https: false
    ...
    email_from: gitlab@example.com
    ...
    support_email: support@example.com

If you specified a database name other than gitlabhq_production when creating the PostgreSQL database in the previous section, edit the config/database.yml file to match with your database name.

Save and exit the file.

Make sure GitLab can write to the log/ and tmp/ directories:

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 sudo chown -R git {log,tmp}
 sudo chmod -R u+rwX {log,tmp,tmp/pids,tmp/sockets,public/uploads}

Create directory for satellites:

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 sudo -u git -H mkdir /home/git/gitlab-satellites
 sudo chmod u+rwx,g+rx,o-rwx /home/git/gitlab-satellites

Create the Unicorn, Rack attack, and PostgreSQL configuration files:

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 sudo -u git -H cp config/unicorn.rb.example config/unicorn.rb
 sudo -u git -H cp config/initializers/rack_attack.rb.example config/initializers/rack_attack.rb
 sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.postgresql config/database.yml

Make sure that config/database.yml is readable to git only:

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 sudo -u git -H chmod o-rwx config/database.yml

Install the gems:

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 sudo gem install bundler
 sudo -u git -H bundle install --deployment --without development test mysql aws

Install GitLab shell, which is an SSH access and repository management software for GitLab:

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sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:shell:install[v1.9.4] REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379 RAILS_ENV=production

Open the GitLab shell configuration file:

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sudo nano /home/git/gitlab-shell/config.yml

Check if the value of gitlab_url matches with the URL of your server.

/home/git/gitlab-shell/config.yml

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user: git
gitlab_url: http://git.example.com/
http_settings:
  self_signed_cert: false
repos_path: "/home/git/repositories/"
auth_file: "/home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys"
redis:
  bin: "/usr/bin/redis-cli"
  host: localhost
  port: 6379
  namespace: resque:gitlab
log_level: INFO
audit_usernames: false

When you are satisfied with the configuration, save and exit the file.

Initialize database and activate advanced features:

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sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production

The command will display the following message

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This will create the necessary database tables and seed the database.
You will lose any previous data stored in the database.
Do you want to continue (yes/no)? 

Type yes and press Enter to continue.

Install the init script and make GitLab start on boot:

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sudo cp lib/support/init.d/gitlab /etc/init.d/gitlab
sudo update-rc.d gitlab defaults 21

Set up logrotate:

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sudo cp lib/support/logrotate/gitlab /etc/logrotate.d/gitlab

Check application status:

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sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:env:info RAILS_ENV=production

Sample output

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System information
System:         Ubuntu 14.04
Current User:   git
Using RVM:      no
Ruby Version:   2.1.2p95
Gem Version:    2.2.2
Bundler Version:1.6.3
Rake Version:   10.3.1
Sidekiq Version:2.17.0

GitLab information
Version:        6.9.2
Revision:       e46b644
Directory:      /home/git/gitlab
DB Adapter:     postgresql
URL:            http://git.example.com
HTTP Clone URL:	http://git.example.com/some-project.git
SSH Clone URL:	git@git.example.com:some-project.git
Using LDAP:     no
Using Omniauth: no

GitLab Shell
Version:        1.9.4
Repositories:   /home/git/repositories/
Hooks:          /home/git/gitlab-shell/hooks/
Git:            /usr/bin/git    

Compile assets:

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sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production

Configure Git global settings for the git user:

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sudo -u git -H git config --global user.name "GitLab"
sudo -u git -H git config --global user.email "gitlab@example.com"
sudo -u git -H git config --global core.autocrlf input

Set the value for user.email according to what is set in config/gitlab.yml

Start GitLab:

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sudo service gitlab start

Set Up Nginx Virtual Host for GitLab

Nginx is the only supported web server for GitLab. In this section, you will create a new virtual host for GitLab and activate the site.

Install Nginx if you haven’t installed it:

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 sudo apt-get install nginx

Copy the sample site config:

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 sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab

Open the config file:

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 sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab

Modify the value for server_name to the fully-qualified domain name of your server:

/etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab

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listen 80;
server_name git.example.com;
server_tokens off; 
root /home/git/gitlab/public;

Save and exit the file.

Deactivate the default virtual host

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 sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Activate the site and restart Nginx to take effect

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 sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab
 sudo service nginx restart

If Nginx failed to start with the following message

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