Select Version to Install

Make sure you view this installation guide from the branch (version) of GitLab you would like to install. In most cases this should be the highest numbered stable branch (example shown below).

If this is unclear check the GitLab Blog for installation guide links by version.

Important notes

This guide is long because it covers many cases and includes all commands you need, this is one of the few installation scripts that actually works out of the box.

This installation guide was created for and tested on Debian/Ubuntu operating systems. Please read doc/install/requirements.md for hardware and operating system requirements. If you want to install on RHEL/CentOS we recommend using the Omnibus packages.

This is the official installation guide to set up a production server. To set up a development installation or for many other installation options please see the installation section of the readme.

The following steps have been known to work. Please use caution when you deviate from this guide. Make sure you don't violate any assumptions GitLab makes about its environment. For example many people run into permission problems because they changed the location of directories or run services as the wrong user.

If you find a bug/error in this guide please submit a merge request following the contributing guide.

Overview

The GitLab installation consists of setting up the following components:

1. Packages / Dependencies
2. Ruby
3. System Users
4. GitLab shell
5. Database
6. GitLab
7. Nginx

1. Packages / Dependencies

sudo is not installed on Debian by default. Make sure your system is up-to-date and install it.

# run as root!
apt-get update -y
apt-get upgrade -y
apt-get install sudo -y

Note: During this installation some files will need to be edited manually. If you are familiar with vim set it as default editor with the commands below. If you are not familiar with vim please skip this and keep using the default editor.

# Install vim and set as default editor
sudo apt-get install -y vim
sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/vim.basic

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

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential 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

Make sure you have the right version of Git installed

# Install Git
sudo apt-get install -y git-core

# Make sure Git is version 1.7.10 or higher, for example 1.7.12 or 1.8.4
git --version

Is the system packaged Git too old? Remove it and compile from source.

# Remove packaged Git
sudo apt-get remove git-core

# Install dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y libcurl4-openssl-dev libexpat1-dev gettext libz-dev libssl-dev build-essential

# Download and compile from source
cd /tmp
curl --progress https://git-core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.8.5.2.tar.gz | tar xz
cd git-1.8.5.2/
make prefix=/usr/local all

# Install into /usr/local/bin
sudo make prefix=/usr/local install

# When editing config/gitlab.yml (Step 6), change the git bin_path to /usr/local/bin/git

Note: In order to receive mail notifications, make sure to install a mail server. By default, Debian is shipped with exim4 whereas Ubuntu does not ship with one. The recommended mail server is postfix and you can install it with:

sudo apt-get install -y postfix

Then select 'Internet Site' and press enter to confirm the hostname.

2. Ruby

The use of ruby version managers such as RVM, rbenv or chruby with GitLab in production frequently leads to hard to diagnose problems. For example, GitLab Shell is called from OpenSSH and having a version manager can prevent pushing and pulling over SSH. Version managers are not supported and we stronly advise everyone to follow the instructions below to use a system ruby.

Remove the old Ruby 1.8 if present

sudo apt-get remove ruby1.8

Download Ruby and compile it:

mkdir /tmp/ruby && cd /tmp/ruby
curl --progress ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.0/ruby-2.0.0-p353.tar.gz | tar xz
cd ruby-2.0.0-p353
./configure --disable-install-rdoc
make
sudo make install

Install the Bundler Gem:

sudo gem install bundler --no-ri --no-rdoc

3. System Users

Create a git user for Gitlab:

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

4. GitLab shell

GitLab Shell is an ssh access and repository management software developed specially for GitLab.

# Go to home directory
cd /home/git

# Clone gitlab shell
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell.git -b v1.9.3

cd gitlab-shell

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

# Edit config and replace gitlab_url
# with something like 'http://domain.com/'
sudo -u git -H editor config.yml

# Do setup
sudo -u git -H ./bin/install

5. Database

We recommend using a PostgreSQL database. For MySQL check MySQL setup guide.

# Install the database packages
sudo apt-get install -y postgresql-9.1 postgresql-client libpq-dev

# Login to PostgreSQL
sudo -u postgres psql -d template1

# Create a user for GitLab.
template1=# CREATE USER git;

# Create the GitLab production database & grant all privileges on database
template1=# CREATE DATABASE gitlabhq_production OWNER git;

# Quit the database session
template1=# \q

# Try connecting to the new database with the new user
sudo -u git -H psql -d gitlabhq_production

6. GitLab

# We'll install GitLab into home directory of the user "git"
cd /home/git

Clone the Source

# Clone GitLab repository
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git -b 6-8-stable gitlab

# Go to gitlab dir
cd /home/git/gitlab

Note: You can change 6-8-stable to master if you want the bleeding edge version, but never install master on a production server!

Configure it

cd /home/git/gitlab

# Copy the example GitLab config
sudo -u git -H cp config/gitlab.yml.example config/gitlab.yml

# Make sure to change "localhost" to the fully-qualified domain name of your
# host serving GitLab where necessary
#
# If you installed Git from source, change the git bin_path to /usr/local/bin/git
sudo -u git -H editor config/gitlab.yml

# Make sure GitLab can write to the log/ and tmp/ directories
sudo chown -R git log/
sudo chown -R git tmp/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX log/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/

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

# Make sure GitLab can write to the tmp/pids/ and tmp/sockets/ directories
sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/pids/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/sockets/

# Make sure GitLab can write to the public/uploads/ directory
sudo chmod -R u+rwX  public/uploads

# Copy the example Unicorn config
sudo -u git -H cp config/unicorn.rb.example config/unicorn.rb

# Enable cluster mode if you expect to have a high load instance
# Ex. change amount of workers to 3 for 2GB RAM server
sudo -u git -H editor config/unicorn.rb

# Copy the example Rack attack config
sudo -u git -H cp config/initializers/rack_attack.rb.example config/initializers/rack_attack.rb

# Configure Git global settings for git user, useful when editing via web
# Edit user.email according to what is set in gitlab.yml
sudo -u git -H git config --global user.name "GitLab"
sudo -u git -H git config --global user.email "gitlab@localhost"
sudo -u git -H git config --global core.autocrlf input

Important Note: Make sure to edit both gitlab.yml and unicorn.rb to match your setup.

Configure GitLab DB settings

# PostgreSQL only:
sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.postgresql config/database.yml

# MySQL only:
sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.mysql config/database.yml

# MySQL and remote PostgreSQL only:
# Update username/password in config/database.yml.
# You only need to adapt the production settings (first part).
# If you followed the database guide then please do as follows:
# Change 'secure password' with the value you have given to $password
# You can keep the double quotes around the password
sudo -u git -H editor config/database.yml

# PostgreSQL and MySQL:
# Make config/database.yml readable to git only
sudo -u git -H chmod o-rwx config/database.yml

Install Gems

Note: As of bundler 1.5.2, you can invoke bundle install -jN (where N the number of your processor cores) and enjoy the parallel gems installation with measurable difference in completion time (~60% faster). Check the number of your cores with nproc. For more information check this post. First make sure you have bundler >= 1.5.2 (run bundle -v) as it addresses some issues that were fixed in 1.5.2.

cd /home/git/gitlab

# For PostgreSQL (note, the option says "without ... mysql")
sudo -u git -H bundle install --deployment --without development test mysql aws

# Or if you use MySQL (note, the option says "without ... postgres")
sudo -u git -H bundle install --deployment --without development test postgres aws

Initialize Database and Activate Advanced Features

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

# Type 'yes' to create the database tables.

# When done you see 'Administrator account created:'

Install Init Script

Download the init script (will be /etc/init.d/gitlab):

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

And if you are installing with a non-default folder or user copy and edit the defaults file:

sudo cp lib/support/init.d/gitlab.default.example /etc/default/gitlab

If you installed gitlab in another directory or as a user other than the default you should change these settings in /etc/default/gitlab. Do not edit /etc/init.d/gitlab as it will be changed on upgrade.

Make GitLab start on boot:

sudo update-rc.d gitlab defaults 21

Set up logrotate

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

Check Application Status

Check if GitLab and its environment are configured correctly:

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

Compile assets

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

Start Your GitLab Instance

sudo service gitlab start
# or
sudo /etc/init.d/gitlab restart

7. Nginx

Note: Nginx is the officially supported web server for GitLab. If you cannot or do not want to use Nginx as your web server, have a look at the GitLab recipes.

Installation

sudo apt-get install -y nginx

Site Configuration

Download an example site config:

sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab

Make sure to edit the config file to match your setup:

# Change YOUR_SERVER_FQDN to the fully-qualified
# domain name of your host serving GitLab.
sudo editor /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab

Restart

sudo service nginx restart

Done!

Double-check Application Status

To make sure you didn't miss anything run a more thorough check with:

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

If all items are green, then congratulations on successfully installing GitLab!

Initial Login

Visit YOUR_SERVER in your web browser for your first GitLab login. The setup has created an admin account for you. You can use it to log in:

root
5iveL!fe

Important Note: Please go over to your profile page and immediately change the password, so nobody can access your GitLab by using this login information later on.

Enjoy!

Advanced Setup Tips

Additional markup styles

Apart from the always supported markdown style there are other rich text files that GitLab can display. But you might have to install a dependency to do so. Please see the github-markup gem readme for more information. For example, reStructuredText markup language support requires python-docutils:

sudo apt-get install -y python-docutils

Custom Redis Connection

If you'd like Resque to connect to a Redis server on a non-standard port or on a different host, you can configure its connection string via the config/resque.yml file.

# example
production: redis://redis.example.tld:6379

If you want to connect the Redis server via socket, then use the "unix:" URL scheme and the path to the Redis socket file in the config/resque.yml file.

# example
production: unix:/path/to/redis/socket

Custom SSH Connection

If you are running SSH on a non-standard port, you must change the gitlab user's SSH config.

# Add to /home/git/.ssh/config
host localhost          # Give your setup a name (here: override localhost)
    user git            # Your remote git user
    port 2222           # Your port number
    hostname 127.0.0.1; # Your server name or IP

You also need to change the corresponding options (e.g. ssh_user, ssh_host, admin_uri) in the config\gitlab.yml file.

LDAP authentication

You can configure LDAP authentication in config/gitlab.yml. Please restart GitLab after editing this file.

Using Custom Omniauth Providers

GitLab uses Omniauth for authentication and already ships with a few providers preinstalled (e.g. LDAP, GitHub, Twitter). But sometimes that is not enough and you need to integrate with other authentication solutions. For these cases you can use the Omniauth provider.

Steps

These steps are fairly general and you will need to figure out the exact details from the Omniauth provider's documentation.

• Stop GitLab sudo service gitlab stop

• Add provider specific configuration options to your config/gitlab.yml (you can use the auth providers section of the example config as a reference)

• Add the gem to your Gemfile gem "omniauth-your-auth-provider"

• If you're using MySQL, install the new Omniauth provider gem by running the following command: sudo -u git -H bundle install --without development test postgres --path vendor/bundle --no-deployment

• If you're using PostgreSQL, install the new Omniauth provider gem by running the following command: sudo -u git -H bundle install --without development test mysql --path vendor/bundle --no-deployment

These are the same commands you used in the Install Gems section with --path vendor/bundle --no-deployment instead of --deployment.

• Start GitLab sudo service gitlab start

Examples

If you have successfully set up a provider that is not shipped with GitLab itself, please let us know. You can help others by reporting successful configurations and probably share a few insights or provide warnings for common errors or pitfalls by sharing your experience in the public Wiki. While we can't officially support every possible auth mechanism out there, we'd like to at least help those with special needs.