• Introduction
  • Version
  • Changelog
• Hardware Requirements
  • CPU
  • Memory
  • Storage
• Supported Web Browsers
• Contributing
• Issues
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Configuration
  • Data Store
  • Database
    • MySQL
      • Internal MySQL Server
      • External MySQL Server
      • Linking to MySQL Container
    • PostgreSQL (Recommended)
      • External PostgreSQL Server
      • Linking to PostgreSQL Container
  • Redis
    • Internal Redis Server
    • External Redis Server
    • Linking to Redis Container
  • Mail
  • SSL
    • Generation of Self Signed Certificates
    • Strengthening the server security
    • Installation of the Certificates
    • Enabling HTTPS support
    • Configuring HSTS
    • Using HTTPS with a load balancer
    • Establishing trust with your server
    • Installing Trusted SSL Server Certificates
  • Deploy to a subdirectory (relative url root)
  • Putting it all together
  • OmniAuth Integration
    • Google
    • Twitter
    • GitHub
  • External Issue Trackers
    • Redmine
    • Jira
    • Mantis
  • Mapping host user and group
  • Piwik
  • Available Configuration Parameters
• Maintenance
  • Creating Backups
  • Restoring Backups
  • Automated Backups
  • Shell Access
• Upgrading
• Rake Tasks
• Announcements
• References

Dockerfile to build a GitLab container image.

Current Version: 7.8.0

• 1 core works for under 100 users but the responsiveness might suffer
• 2 cores is the recommended number of cores and supports up to 100 users
• 4 cores supports up to 1,000 users
• 8 cores supports up to 10,000 users

• 512MB is too little memory, GitLab will be very slow and you will need 250MB of swap
• 768MB is the minimal memory size but we advise against this
• 1GB supports up to 100 users (with individual repositories under 250MB, otherwise git memory usage necessitates using swap space)
• 2GB is the recommended memory size and supports up to 1,000 users
• 4GB supports up to 10,000 users

The necessary hard drive space largely depends on the size of the repos you want to store in GitLab. But as a rule of thumb you should have at least twice as much free space as your all repos combined take up. You need twice the storage because GitLab satellites contain an extra copy of each repo.

If you want to be flexible about growing your hard drive space in the future consider mounting it using LVM so you can add more hard drives when you need them.

Apart from a local hard drive you can also mount a volume that supports the network file system (NFS) protocol. This volume might be located on a file server, a network attached storage (NAS) device, a storage area network (SAN) or on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume.

If you have enough RAM memory and a recent CPU the speed of GitLab is mainly limited by hard drive seek times. Having a fast drive (7200 RPM and up) or a solid state drive (SSD) will improve the responsiveness of GitLab.

• Chrome (Latest stable version)
• Firefox (Latest released version)
• Safari 7+ (Know problem: required fields in html5 do not work)
• Opera (Latest released version)
• IE 10+

If you find this image useful here's how you can help:

• Send a Pull Request with your awesome new features and bug fixes
• Help new users with Issues they may encounter
• Send me a tip via Bitcoin or using Gratipay

Docker is a relatively new project and is active being developed and tested by a thriving community of developers and testers and every release of docker features many enhancements and bugfixes.

Given the nature of the development and release cycle it is very important that you have the latest version of docker installed because any issue that you encounter might have already been fixed with a newer docker release.

For ubuntu users I suggest installing docker using docker's own package repository since the version of docker packaged in the ubuntu repositories are a little dated.

Here is the shortform of the installation of an updated version of docker on ubuntu.

sudo apt-get purge docker.io
curl -s https://get.docker.io/ubuntu/ | sudo sh
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lxc-docker

Fedora and RHEL/CentOS users should try disabling selinux with setenforce 0 and check if resolves the issue. If it does than there is not much that I can help you with. You can either stick with selinux disabled (not recommended by redhat) or switch to using ubuntu.

If using the latest docker version and/or disabling selinux does not fix the issue then please file a issue request on the issues page.

In your issue report please make sure you provide the following information:

• The host distribution and release version.
• Output of the docker version command
• Output of the docker info command
• The docker run command you used to run the image (mask out the sensitive bits).

Pull the image from the docker index. This is the recommended method of installation as it is easier to update image. These builds are performed by the Docker Trusted Build service.

docker pull sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

You can also pull the latest tag which is built from the repository HEAD

docker pull sameersbn/gitlab:latest

Alternately you can build the image locally.

git clone https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab.git
cd docker-gitlab
docker build --tag="$USER/gitlab" .

You can launch the image using the docker command line,

docker run --name='gitlab' -it --rm \
-e 'GITLAB_PORT=10080' -e 'GITLAB_SSH_PORT=10022' \
-p 10022:22 -p 10080:80 \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/run/docker.sock \
-v $(which docker):/bin/docker \
sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

Or you can use fig. Assuming you have fig installed,

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab/master/fig.yml
fig up

The rest of the document will use the docker command line. You can quite simply adapt your configuration into a fig.yml file if you wish to do so.

NOTE: Please allow a couple of minutes for the GitLab application to start.

Point your browser to http://localhost:10080 and login using the default username and password:

• username: root
• password: 5iveL!fe

You should now have the GitLab application up and ready for testing. If you want to use this image in production the please read on.

GitLab is a code hosting software and as such you don't want to lose your code when the docker container is stopped/deleted. To avoid losing any data, you should mount a volume at,

• /home/git/data

SELinux users are also required to change the security context of the mount point so that it plays nicely with selinux.

mkdir -p /opt/gitlab/data
sudo chcon -Rt svirt_sandbox_file_t /opt/gitlab/data

Volumes can be mounted in docker by specifying the '-v' option in the docker run command.

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

GitLab uses a database backend to store its data. You can configure this image to use either MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Note: GitLab HQ recommends using PostgreSQL over MySQL

The internal mysql server has been removed from the image. Please use a linked mysql container or specify a connection to a external mysql server.

If you have been using the internal mysql server follow these instructions to migrate to a linked mysql container:

Assuming that your mysql data is available at /opt/gitlab/mysql

docker run --name=mysql -d \
  -v /opt/gitlab/mysql:/var/lib/mysql \
  sameersbn/mysql:latest

This will start a mysql container with your existing mysql data. Now login to the mysql container and create a user for the existing gitlabhq_production database.

All you need to do now is link this mysql container to the gitlab ci container using the --link mysql:mysql option and provide the DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS parameters.

Refer to Linking to MySQL Container for more information.

The image can be configured to use an external MySQL database instead of starting a MySQL server internally. The database configuration should be specified using environment variables while starting the GitLab image.

Before you start the GitLab image create user and database for gitlab.

CREATE USER 'gitlab'@'%.%.%.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `gitlabhq_production` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET `utf8` COLLATE `utf8_unicode_ci`;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `gitlabhq_production`.* TO 'gitlab'@'%.%.%.%';

We are now ready to start the GitLab application.

Assuming that the mysql server host is 192.168.1.100

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
  -e 'DB_HOST=192.168.1.100' -e 'DB_NAME=gitlabhq_production' -e 'DB_USER=gitlab' -e 'DB_PASS=password' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

You can link this image with a mysql container for the database requirements. The alias of the mysql server container should be set to mysql while linking with the gitlab image.

If a mysql container is linked, only the DB_TYPE, DB_HOST and DB_PORT settings are automatically retrieved using the linkage. You may still need to set other database connection parameters such as the DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS and so on.

To illustrate linking with a mysql container, we will use the sameersbn/mysql image. When using docker-mysql in production you should mount a volume for the mysql data store. Please refer the README of docker-mysql for details.

First, lets pull the mysql image from the docker index.

docker pull sameersbn/mysql:latest

For data persistence lets create a store for the mysql and start the container.

SELinux users are also required to change the security context of the mount point so that it plays nicely with selinux.

mkdir -p /opt/mysql/data
sudo chcon -Rt svirt_sandbox_file_t /opt/mysql/data

The run command looks like this.

docker run --name=mysql -d \
  -e 'DB_NAME=gitlabhq_production' -e 'DB_USER=gitlab' -e 'DB_PASS=password' \
	-v /opt/mysql/data:/var/lib/mysql \
	sameersbn/mysql:latest

The above command will create a database named gitlabhq_production and also create a user named gitlab with the password password with full/remote access to the gitlabhq_production database.

We are now ready to start the GitLab application.

docker run --name=gitlab -d --link mysql:mysql \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

The image will automatically fetch the DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS variables from the mysql container using the magic of docker links and works with the following images:

• sameersbn/mysql
• centurylink/mysql
• orchardup/mysql

The image also supports using an external PostgreSQL Server. This is also controlled via environment variables.

CREATE ROLE gitlab with LOGIN CREATEDB PASSWORD 'password';
CREATE DATABASE gitlabhq_production;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE gitlabhq_production to gitlab;

We are now ready to start the GitLab application.

Assuming that the PostgreSQL server host is 192.168.1.100

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
  -e 'DB_TYPE=postgres' -e 'DB_HOST=192.168.1.100' -e 'DB_NAME=gitlabhq_production' -e 'DB_USER=gitlab' -e 'DB_PASS=password' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

You can link this image with a postgresql container for the database requirements. The alias of the postgresql server container should be set to postgresql while linking with the gitlab image.

If a postgresql container is linked, only the DB_TYPE, DB_HOST and DB_PORT settings are automatically retrieved using the linkage. You may still need to set other database connection parameters such as the DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS and so on.

To illustrate linking with a postgresql container, we will use the sameersbn/postgresql image. When using postgresql image in production you should mount a volume for the postgresql data store. Please refer the README of docker-postgresql for details.

First, lets pull the postgresql image from the docker index.

docker pull sameersbn/postgresql:latest

For data persistence lets create a store for the postgresql and start the container.

SELinux users are also required to change the security context of the mount point so that it plays nicely with selinux.

mkdir -p /opt/postgresql/data
sudo chcon -Rt svirt_sandbox_file_t /opt/postgresql/data

The run command looks like this.

docker run --name=postgresql -d \
  -e 'DB_NAME=gitlabhq_production' -e 'DB_USER=gitlab' -e 'DB_PASS=password' \
  -v /opt/postgresql/data:/var/lib/postgresql \
  sameersbn/postgresql:latest

The above command will create a database named gitlabhq_production and also create a user named gitlab with the password password with access to the gitlabhq_production database.

We are now ready to start the GitLab application.

docker run --name=gitlab -d --link postgresql:postgresql \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

The image will automatically fetch the DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS variables from the postgresql container using the magic of docker links and works with the following images:

• sameersbn/postgresql
• orchardup/postgresql
• paintedfox/postgresql

GitLab uses the redis server for its key-value data store. The redis server connection details can be specified using environment variables.

The internal redis server has been removed from the image. Please use a linked redis container or specify a external redis connection.

The image can be configured to use an external redis server instead of starting a redis server internally. The configuration should be specified using environment variables while starting the GitLab image.

Assuming that the redis server host is 192.168.1.100

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm \
  -e 'REDIS_HOST=192.168.1.100' -e 'REDIS_PORT=6379' \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

You can link this image with a redis container to satisfy gitlab's redis requirement. The alias of the redis server container should be set to redisio while linking with the gitlab image.

To illustrate linking with a redis container, we will use the sameersbn/redis image. Please refer the README of docker-redis for details.

First, lets pull the redis image from the docker index.

docker pull sameersbn/redis:latest

Lets start the redis container

docker run --name=redis -d sameersbn/redis:latest

We are now ready to start the GitLab application.

docker run --name=gitlab -d --link redis:redisio \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

The mail configuration should be specified using environment variables while starting the GitLab image. The configuration defaults to using gmail to send emails and requires the specification of a valid username and password to login to the gmail servers.

Please refer the Available Configuration Parameters section for the list of SMTP parameters that can be specified.

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
  -e 'SMTP_USER=USER@gmail.com' -e 'SMTP_PASS=PASSWORD' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

Access to the gitlab application can be secured using SSL so as to prevent unauthorized access to the data in your repositories. While a CA certified SSL certificate allows for verification of trust via the CA, a self signed certificates can also provide an equal level of trust verification as long as each client takes some additional steps to verify the identity of your website. I will provide instructions on achieving this towards the end of this section.

To secure your application via SSL you basically need two things:

• Private key (.key)
• SSL certificate (.crt)

When using CA certified certificates, these files are provided to you by the CA. When using self-signed certificates you need to generate these files yourself. Skip the following section if you are armed with CA certified SSL certificates.

Jump to the Using HTTPS with a load balancer section if you are using a load balancer such as hipache, haproxy or nginx.

Generation of self-signed SSL certificates involves a simple 3 step procedure.

STEP 1: Create the server private key

openssl genrsa -out gitlab.key 2048

STEP 2: Create the certificate signing request (CSR)

openssl req -new -key gitlab.key -out gitlab.csr

STEP 3: Sign the certificate using the private key and CSR

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in gitlab.csr -signkey gitlab.key -out gitlab.crt

Congratulations! you have now generated an SSL certificate thats valid for 365 days.

This section provides you with instructions to strengthen your server security. To achieve this we need to generate stronger DHE parameters.

openssl dhparam -out dhparam.pem 2048

Out of the four files generated above, we need to install the gitlab.key, gitlab.crt and dhparam.pem files at the gitlab server. The CSR file is not needed, but do make sure you safely backup the file (in case you ever need it again).

The default path that the gitlab application is configured to look for the SSL certificates is at /home/git/data/certs, this can however be changed using the SSL_KEY_PATH, SSL_CERTIFICATE_PATH and SSL_DHPARAM_PATH configuration options.

If you remember from above, the /home/git/data path is the path of the data store, which means that we have to create a folder named certs inside /opt/gitlab/data/ and copy the files into it and as a measure of security we will update the permission on the gitlab.key file to only be readable by the owner.

mkdir -p /opt/gitlab/data/certs
cp gitlab.key /opt/gitlab/data/certs/
cp gitlab.crt /opt/gitlab/data/certs/
cp dhparam.pem /opt/gitlab/data/certs/
chmod 400 /opt/gitlab/data/certs/gitlab.key

Great! we are now just one step away from having our application secured.

HTTPS support can be enabled by setting the GITLAB_HTTPS option to true. Additionally, when using self-signed SSL certificates you need to the set SSL_SELF_SIGNED option to true as well. Assuming we are using self-signed certificates

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
  -e 'GITLAB_HTTPS=true' -e 'SSL_SELF_SIGNED=true' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

In this configuration, any requests made over the plain http protocol will automatically be redirected to use the https protocol. However, this is not optimal when using a load balancer.

HSTS if supported by the browsers makes sure that your users will only reach your sever via HTTPS. When the user comes for the first time it sees a header from the server which states for how long from now this site should only be reachable via HTTPS - that's the HSTS max-age value.

With GITLAB_HTTPS_HSTS_MAXAGE you can configure that value. The default value is 31536000 seconds. If you want to disable a already sent HSTS MAXAGE value, set it to 0.

docker run --name=gitlab -d \
 -e 'GITLAB_HTTPS=true' -e 'SSL_SELF_SIGNED=true' \
 -e 'GITLAB_HTTPS_HSTS_MAXAGE=2592000'
 -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
 sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

If you want to completely disable HSTS set GITLAB_HTTPS_HSTS_ENABLED to false.

Load balancers like nginx/haproxy/hipache talk to backend applications over plain http and as such the installation of ssl keys and certificates are not required and should NOT be installed in the container. The SSL configuration has to instead be done at the load balancer.

However, when using a load balancer you MUST set GITLAB_HTTPS to true. Additionally you will need to set the SSL_SELF_SIGNED option to true if self signed SSL certificates are in use.

With this in place, you should configure the load balancer to support handling of https requests. But that is out of the scope of this document. Please refer to Using SSL/HTTPS with HAProxy for information on the subject.

When using a load balancer, you probably want to make sure the load balancer performs the automatic http to https redirection. Information on this can also be found in the link above.

In summation, when using a load balancer, the docker command would look for the most part something like this:

docker run --name=gitlab -d -p 10022:22 -p 10080:80 \
  -e 'GITLAB_SSH_PORT=10022' -e 'GITLAB_PORT=443' \
  -e 'GITLAB_HTTPS=true' -e 'SSL_SELF_SIGNED=true' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

Again, drop the -e 'SSL_SELF_SIGNED=true' option if you are using CA certified SSL certificates.

This section deals will self-signed ssl certificates. If you are using CA certified certificates, your done.

This section is more of a client side configuration so as to add a level of confidence at the client to be 100 percent sure they are communicating with whom they think they.

This is simply done by adding the servers certificate into their list of trusted certificates. On ubuntu, this is done by copying the gitlab.crt file to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ and executing update-ca-certificates.

Again, this is a client side configuration which means that everyone who is going to communicate with the server should perform this configuration on their machine. In short, distribute the gitlab.crt file among your developers and ask them to add it to their list of trusted ssl certificates. Failure to do so will result in errors that look like this:

git clone https://git.local.host/gitlab-ce.git
fatal: unable to access 'https://git.local.host/gitlab-ce.git': server certificate verification failed. CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt CRLfile: none

You can do the same at the web browser. Instructions for installing the root certificate for firefox can be found here. You will find similar options chrome, just make sure you install the certificate under the authorities tab of the certificate manager dialog.

There you have it, thats all there is to it.

If your GitLab CI server is using self-signed SSL certificates then you should make sure the GitLab CI server certificate is trusted on the GitLab server for them to be able to talk to each other.

The default path image is configured to look for the trusted SSL certificates is at /home/git/data/certs/ca.crt, this can however be changed using the CA_CERTIFICATES_PATH configuration option.

Copy the ca.crt file into the certs directory on the datastore. The ca.crt file should contain the root certificates of all the servers you want to trust. With respect to GitLab CI, this will be the contents of the gitlab_ci.crt file as described in the README of the docker-gitlab-ci container.

By default, our own server certificate gitlab.crt is added to the trusted certificates list.

By default GitLab expects that your application is running at the root (eg. /). This section explains how to run your application inside a directory.

Let's assume we want to deploy our application to '/git'. GitLab needs to know this directory to generate the appropriate routes. This can be specified using the GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT configuration option like so:

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm \
  -e 'GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT=/git' \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

GitLab will now be accessible at the /git path, e.g. http://www.example.com/git.

Note: The GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT parameter should always begin with a slash and SHOULD NOT have any trailing slashes.

docker run --name=gitlab -d -h git.local.host \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  -v /opt/gitlab/mysql:/var/lib/mysql \
  -e 'GITLAB_HOST=git.local.host' -e 'GITLAB_EMAIL=gitlab@local.host' \
  -e 'SMTP_USER=USER@gmail.com' -e 'SMTP_PASS=PASSWORD' \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

If you are using an external mysql database

docker run --name=gitlab -d -h git.local.host \
  -v /opt/gitlab/data:/home/git/data \
  -e 'DB_HOST=192.168.1.100' -e 'DB_NAME=gitlabhq_production' -e 'DB_USER=gitlab' -e 'DB_PASS=password' \
  -e 'GITLAB_HOST=git.local.host' -e 'GITLAB_EMAIL=gitlab@local.host' \
  -e 'SMTP_USER=USER@gmail.com' -e 'SMTP_PASS=PASSWORD' \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

GitLab leverages OmniAuth to allow users to sign in using Twitter, GitHub, and other popular services. Configuring OmniAuth does not prevent standard GitLab authentication or LDAP (if configured) from continuing to work. Users can choose to sign in using any of the configured mechanisms.

Refer to the GitLab documentation for additional information.

To enable the Google OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Google. Google will generate a client ID and secret key for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the client ID and secret key with google.

Once you have the client ID and secret keys generated, configure them using the OAUTH_GOOGLE_API_KEY and OAUTH_GOOGLE_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your client ID is xxx.apps.googleusercontent.com and client secret key is yyy, then adding -e 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx.apps.googleusercontent.com' -e 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for Google OAuth.

You can also restrict logins to a single domain by adding -e 'OAUTH_GOOGLE_RESTRICT_DOMAIN=example.com'. This is particularly useful when combined with -e 'OAUTH_ALLOW_SSO=true' and -e 'OAUTH_BLOCK_AUTO_CREATED_USERS=false'.

To enable the Twitter OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with Twitter. Twitter will generate a API key and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the API key and secret with twitter.

Once you have the API key and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_TWITTER_API_KEY and OAUTH_TWITTER_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your API key is xxx and the API secret key is yyy, then adding -e 'OAUTH_TWITTER_API_KEY=xxx' -e 'OAUTH_TWITTER_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for Twitter OAuth.

To enable the GitHub OAuth2 OmniAuth provider you must register your application with GitHub. GitHub will generate a Client ID and secret for you to use. Please refer to the GitLab documentation for the procedure to generate the Client ID and secret with github.

Once you have the Client ID and secret generated, configure them using the OAUTH_GITHUB_API_KEY and OAUTH_GITHUB_APP_SECRET environment variables respectively.

For example, if your Client ID is xxx and the Client secret is yyy, then adding -e 'OAUTH_GITHUB_API_KEY=xxx' -e 'OAUTH_GITHUB_APP_SECRET=yyy' to the docker run command enables support for GitHub OAuth.

GitLab can be configured to use third party issue trackers such as Redmine and Atlassian Jira. Use of third party issue trackers have to be configured on a per project basis from the project settings page. This means that the GitLab's issue tracker is always the default tracker unless specified otherwise.

Support for issue tracking using Redmine can be added by specifying the complete URL of the Redmine web server in the REDMINE_URL configuration option.

For example, if your Redmine server is accessible at https://redmine.example.com, then adding -e 'REDMINE_URL=https://redmine.example.com' to the docker run command enables Redmine support in GitLab

If you are using the docker-redmine image, then you can one up the gitlab integration with redmine by adding --volumes-from=gitlab flag to the docker run command while starting the redmine container.

By using the above option the /home/git/data/repositories directory will be accessible by the redmine container and now you can add your git repository path to your redmine project. If, for example, in your gitlab server you have a project named opensource/gitlab, the bare repository will be accessible at /home/git/data/repositories/opensource/gitlab.git.

Support for issue tracking using Jira can be added by specifying the complete URL of the Jira web server in the JIRA_URL configuration option.

For example, if your Jira server is accessible at https://jira.example.com, then adding -e 'JIRA_URL=https://jira.example.com' to the docker run command enables Jira support in GitLab

Support for issue tracking using mantis can be added by specifying the complete URL of the mantis web server in the MANTIS_URL configuration option.

For example, if your mantis server is accessible at https://mantis.example.com, then adding -e 'MANTIS_URL=https://mantis.example.com' to the docker run command enables mantis support in GitLab.

Per default the container is configured to run gitlab as user and group git with uid and gid 1000. The host possibly uses this ids for different purposes leading to unfavorable effects. From the host it appears as if the mounted data volumes are owned by the host's user/group 1000.

Also the container processes seem to be executed as the host's user/group 1000. The container can be configured to map the uid and gid of git to different ids on host by passing the environment variables USERMAP_UID and USERMAP_GID. The following command maps the ids to user and group git on the host.

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm [options] \
  -e "USERMAP_UID=$(id -u git)" -e "USERMAP_GID=$(id -g git)" \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

When changing this mapping, all files and directories in the mounted data volume /home/git/data have to be re-owned by the new ids. This can be achieved automatically using the following command:

docker run --name=gitlab -d [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:sanitize

If you want to monitor your gitlab instance with Piwik, there are two options to setup: PIWIK_URL and PIWIK_SITE_ID. These options should contain something like:

• PIWIK_URL=piwik.example.org
• PIWIK_SITE_ID=42

Please refer the docker run command options for the --env-file flag where you can specify all required environment variables in a single file. This will save you from writing a potentially long docker run command. Alternately you can use fig.

Below is the complete list of available options that can be used to customize your gitlab installation.

• GITLAB_HOST: The hostname of the GitLab server. Defaults to localhost
• GITLAB_PORT: The port of the GitLab server. Defaults to 80 for plain http and 443 when https is enabled.
• GITLAB_TIMEZONE: Configure the timezone for the gitlab application. This configuration does not effect cron jobs. Defaults to UTC.
• GITLAB_EMAIL: The email address for the GitLab server. Defaults to example@example.com.
• GITLAB_EMAIL_ENABLED: Enable or disable gitlab mailer. Defaults to the SMTP_ENABLED configuration.
• GITLAB_USERNAME_CHANGE: Enable or disable ability for users to change their username. Defaults is true.
• GITLAB_CREATE_GROUP: Enable or disable ability for users to create groups. Defaults is true.
• GITLAB_PROJECTS_ISSUES: Set if issues feature should be enabled by default for new projects. Defaults is true.
• GITLAB_PROJECTS_MERGE_REQUESTS: Set if merge requests feature should be enabled by default for new projects. Defaults is true.
• GITLAB_PROJECTS_WIKI: Set if wiki feature should be enabled by default for new projects. Defaults is true.
• GITLAB_PROJECTS_SNIPPETS: Set if snippets feature should be enabled by default for new projects. Defaults is false.
• GITLAB_PROJECTS_VISIBILITY: Set default projects visibility level. Possible values public, private and internal. Defaults to private.
• GITLAB_RESTRICTED_VISIBILITY: Comma separated list of visibility levels to restrict non-admin users to set. Possible visibility options are public, private and internal.
• GITLAB_WEBHOOK_TIMEOUT: Sets the timeout for webhooks. Defaults to 10 seconds.
• GITLAB_BACKUP_DIR: The backup folder in the container. Defaults to /home/git/data/backups
• GITLAB_BACKUPS: Setup cron job to automatic backups. Possible values disable, daily, weekly or monthly. Disabled by default
• GITLAB_BACKUP_EXPIRY: Configure how long (in seconds) to keep backups before they are deleted. By default when automated backups are disabled backups are kept forever (0 seconds), else the backups expire in 7 days (604800 seconds).
• GITLAB_BACKUP_TIME: Set a time for the automatic backups in HH:MM format. Defaults to 04:00.
• GITLAB_SSH_HOST: The ssh host. Defaults to GITLAB_HOST.
• GITLAB_SSH_PORT: The ssh port number. Defaults to 22.
• GITLAB_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT: The relative url of the GitLab server, e.g. /git. No default.
• GITLAB_HTTPS: Set to true to enable https support, disabled by default.
• GITLAB_HTTPS_HSTS_ENABLED: Advanced configuration option for turning off the HSTS configuration. Applicable only when SSL is in use. Defaults to true. See #138 for use case scenario.
• GITLAB_HTTPS_HSTS_MAXAGE: Advanced configuration option for setting the HSTS max-age in the gitlab nginx vHost configuration. Applicable only when SSL is in use. Defaults to 31536000.
• SSL_SELF_SIGNED: Set to true when using self signed ssl certificates. false by default.
• SSL_CERTIFICATE_PATH: Location of the ssl certificate. Defaults to /home/git/data/certs/gitlab.crt
• SSL_KEY_PATH: Location of the ssl private key. Defaults to /home/git/data/certs/gitlab.key
• SSL_DHPARAM_PATH: Location of the dhparam file. Defaults to /home/git/data/certs/dhparam.pem
• SSL_VERIFY_CLIENT: Enable verification of client certificates using the CA_CERTIFICATES_PATH file. Defaults to false
• CA_CERTIFICATES_PATH: List of SSL certificates to trust. Defaults to /home/git/data/certs/ca.crt.
• NGINX_WORKERS: The number of nginx workers to start. Defaults to 1.
• NGINX_MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE: Maximum acceptable upload size. Defaults to 20m.
• NGINX_X_FORWARDED_PROTO: Advanced configuration option for the proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto setting in the gitlab nginx vHost configuration. Defaults to https when GITLAB_HTTPS is true, else defaults to $scheme.
• REDIS_HOST: The hostname of the redis server. Defaults to localhost
• REDIS_PORT: The connection port of the redis server. Defaults to 6379.
• UNICORN_WORKERS: The number of unicorn workers to start. Defaults to 2.
• UNICORN_TIMEOUT: Sets the timeout of unicorn worker processes. Defaults to 60 seconds.
• SIDEKIQ_CONCURRENCY: The number of concurrent sidekiq jobs to run. Defaults to 25
• DB_TYPE: The database type. Possible values: mysql, postgres. Defaults to mysql.
• DB_HOST: The database server hostname. Defaults to localhost.
• DB_PORT: The database server port. Defaults to 3306 for mysql and 5432 for postgresql.
• DB_NAME: The database database name. Defaults to gitlabhq_production
• DB_USER: The database database user. Defaults to root
• DB_PASS: The database database password. Defaults to no password
• DB_POOL: The database database connection pool count. Defaults to 10.
• SMTP_ENABLED: Enable mail delivery via SMTP. Defaults to true if SMTP_USER is defined, else defaults to false.
• SMTP_DOMAIN: SMTP domain. Defaults to www.gmail.com
• SMTP_HOST: SMTP server host. Defaults to smtp.gmail.com.
• SMTP_PORT: SMTP server port. Defaults to 587.
• SMTP_USER: SMTP username.
• SMTP_PASS: SMTP password.
• SMTP_STARTTLS: Enable STARTTLS. Defaults to true.
• SMTP_OPENSSL_VERIFY_MODE: SMTP openssl verification mode. Accepted values are none, peer, client_once and fail_if_no_peer_cert. SSL certificate verification is performed by default.
• SMTP_AUTHENTICATION: Specify the SMTP authentication method. Defaults to login if SMTP_USER is set.
• LDAP_ENABLED: Enable LDAP. Defaults to false
• LDAP_HOST: LDAP Host
• LDAP_PORT: LDAP Port. Defaults to 389
• LDAP_UID: LDAP UID. Defaults to sAMAccountName
• LDAP_METHOD: LDAP method, Possible values are ssl, tls and plain. Defaults to plain
• LDAP_BIND_DN: No default.
• LDAP_PASS: LDAP password
• LDAP_ACTIVE_DIRECTORY: Specifies if LDAP server is Active Directory LDAP server. If your LDAP server is not AD, set this to false. Defaults to true,
• LDAP_ALLOW_USERNAME_OR_EMAIL_LOGIN: If enabled, GitLab will ignore everything after the first '@' in the LDAP username submitted by the user on login. Defaults to false if LDAP_UID is userPrincipalName, else true.
• LDAP_BASE: Base where we can search for users. No default.
• LDAP_USER_FILTER: Filter LDAP users. No default.
• OAUTH_ALLOW_SSO: This allows users to login without having a user account first. User accounts will be created automatically when authentication was successful. Defaults to false.
• OAUTH_BLOCK_AUTO_CREATED_USERS: Locks down those users until they have been cleared by the admin. Defaults to true.
• OAUTH_GOOGLE_API_KEY: Google App Client ID. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GOOGLE_APP_SECRET: Google App Client Secret. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GOOGLE_RESTRICT_DOMAIN: Google App restricted domain. No defaults.
• OAUTH_TWITTER_API_KEY: Twitter App API key. No defaults.
• OAUTH_TWITTER_APP_SECRET: Twitter App API secret. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GITHUB_API_KEY: GitHub App Client ID. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GITHUB_APP_SECRET: GitHub App Client secret. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GITLAB_API_KEY: GitLab App Client ID. No defaults.
• OAUTH_GITLAB_APP_SECRET: GitLab App Client secret. No defaults.
• REDMINE_URL: Location of the redmine server, e.g. -e 'REDMINE_URL=https://redmine.example.com'. No defaults.
• JIRA_URL: Location of the jira server, e.g. -e 'JIRA_URL=https://jira.example.com'. No defaults.
• USERMAP_UID: Sets the uid for user git to the specified uid. Defaults to 1000.
• USERMAP_GID: Sets the gid for group git to the specified gid. Defaults to USERMAP_UID if defined, else defaults to 1000.
• GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID: Google Analytics ID. No defaults.
• PIWIK_URL: Sets the Piwik URL. No defaults.
• PIWIK_SITE_ID: Sets the Piwik site ID. No defaults.

Gitlab defines a rake task to easily take a backup of your gitlab installation. The backup consists of all git repositories, uploaded files and as you might expect, the sql database.

Before taking a backup, please make sure that the gitlab image is not running for obvious reasons

docker stop gitlab

To take a backup all you need to do is run the gitlab rake task to create a backup.

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:rake gitlab:backup:create

A backup will be created in the backups folder of the Data Store. You can change that behavior by setting your own path within the container. To do so you have to pass the argument -e "GITLAB_BACKUP_DIR:/path/to/backups" to the docker run command.

Gitlab defines a rake task to easily restore a backup of your gitlab installation. Before performing the restore operation please make sure that the gitlab image is not running.

docker stop gitlab

To restore a backup, run the image in interactive (-it) mode and pass the "app:restore" command to the container image.

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:rake gitlab:backup:restore

The restore operation will list all available backups in reverse chronological order. Select the backup you want to restore and gitlab will do its job.

To avoid user interaction in the restore operation, you can specify the timestamp of the specific backup using the BACKUP argument to the rake task.

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:rake gitlab:backup:restore BACKUP=1417624827

The image can be configured to automatically take backups on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Adding -e 'GITLAB_BACKUPS=daily' to the docker run command will enable daily backups. Adding -e 'GITLAB_BACKUPS=weekly' or -e 'GITLAB_BACKUPS=monthly' will enable weekly or monthly backups.

Daily backups are created at GITLAB_BACKUP_TIME which defaults to 04:00 everyday. Weekly backups are created every Sunday at the same time as the daily backups. Monthly backups are created on the 1st of every month at the same time as the daily backups.

By default, when automated backups are enabled, backups are held for a period of 7 days. While when automated backups are disabled, the backups are held for an infinite period of time. This can behavior can be configured via the GITLAB_BACKUP_EXPIRY option.

For debugging and maintenance purposes you may want access the containers shell. If you are using docker version 1.3.0 or higher you can access a running containers shell using docker exec command.

docker exec -it gitlab bash

If you are using an older version of docker, you can use the nsenter linux tool (part of the util-linux package) to access the container shell.

Some linux distros (e.g. ubuntu) use older versions of the util-linux which do not include the nsenter tool. To get around this @jpetazzo has created a nice docker image that allows you to install the nsenter utility and a helper script named docker-enter on these distros.

To install nsenter execute the following command on your host,

docker run --rm -v /usr/local/bin:/target jpetazzo/nsenter

Now you can access the container shell using the command

sudo docker-enter gitlab

For more information refer https://github.com/jpetazzo/nsenter

GitLabHQ releases new versions on the 22nd of every month, bugfix releases immediately follow. I update this project almost immediately when a release is made (at least it has been the case so far). If you are using the image in production environments I recommend that you delay updates by a couple of days after the gitlab release, allowing some time for the dust to settle down.

To upgrade to newer gitlab releases, simply follow this 4 step upgrade procedure.

• Step 1: Update the docker image.

docker pull sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

• Step 2: Stop and remove the currently running image

docker stop gitlab
docker rm gitlab

• Step 3: Create a backup

docker run --name=gitlab -it --rm [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:xx.xx.xx app:rake gitlab:backup:create

Replace xx.xx.xx with the version you are upgrading from. For example, if you are upgrading from version 6.0.0, set xx.xx.xx to 6.0.0

• Step 4: Start the image

docker run --name=gitlab -d [OPTIONS] sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0

The app:rake command allows you to run gitlab rake tasks. To run a rake task simply specify the task to be executed to the app:rake command. For example, if you want to gather information about GitLab and the system it runs on.

docker run --name=gitlab -d [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:rake gitlab:env:info

Similarly, to import bare repositories into GitLab project instance

docker run --name=gitlab -d [OPTIONS] \
  sameersbn/gitlab:7.8.0 app:rake gitlab:import:repos

For a complete list of available rake tasks please refer https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/tree/master/doc/raketasks or the help section of your gitlab installation.

• https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq
• https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/doc/install/installation.md
• https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md
• http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpSslModule
• https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Strong_SSL_Security_On_nginx.html
• https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-recipes/blob/master/web-server/nginx/gitlab-ssl
• https://github.com/jpetazzo/nsenter
• https://jpetazzo.github.io/2014/03/23/lxc-attach-nsinit-nsenter-docker-0-9/