Content on this page is probably outdated and represents my personal knowledge, feelings and understading of things at that time.
After searching the web for a good (read: easy) way of installing GitLab on my Debian 7 (Wheezy) VPS I decided to go with the official instructions. But as usuall I had to make due with a bit of improvisation and therefore I’m writting down this modified quick’n’dirty version.
root # apt-get update
root # apt-get upgrade
Note: I'm usually running my systems without sudo. This guide will presume you su-ed to root and are using sudo only to act as the git user.
root # apt-get install sudo
Now with the real dependencies:
root # 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 installed Python version between 2.5 and 3.0 - by default wheezy comes with python 2.7 and that's good. Also it looks like python2 needs to be symlinked to python, which again by default should be a go. The check:
user $ python --version
user $ python2 --version
We also need git 1.7.10 or higher, which again by default should be ok. To install:
root # apt-get install git-core
And to check the version:
user $ git --version
You will also need to have the mail sending installed and setup. This is way out of scope of this blog post.
Next up is ruby. The official documentation suggest compiling it yourself, but there's no need, wheezy packs ruby (1.9.1 as of this writing) and again, this should be all ok.
To install:
root # apt-get install ruby ruby-dev
To check:
user $ ruby --versionroot # adduser --disabled-login --gecos 'GitLab' git
root # sudo -u git -H git config --global user.name "GitLab"
root # sudo -u git -H git config --global user.email "gitlab@localhost"
root # sudo -u git -H git config --global core.autocrlf inputroot # cd /home/git
root # sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell.git -b v1.8.0
root # cd gitlab-shell
root # sudo -u git -H cp config.yml.example config.yml
Now you'll need to edit the configuration. Bare minimum is editing of "github_url" which has to be a dedicated domain/subdomain and cannot be a subdirectory. After that we'll install the GitLab shell.
root # sudo -u git -H editor config.yml
root # sudo -u git -H ./bin/installroot # cd /home/git
root # sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git -b 6-4-stable gitlab
root # cd gitlab
That'll check out the latest code and now you'll need to configure it. Again, the bare minimum configuration is the domain/subdomain (host directive near the top).
root # cd /home/git/gitlab
root # sudo -u git -H cp config/gitlab.yml.example config/gitlab.yml
root # sudo -u git -H editor config/gitlab.yml
Next there's a bunch of checking/setting stuff that should already be done, but newertheless:
root # chown -R git log/
root # chown -R git tmp/
root # chmod -R u+rwX log/
root # chmod -R u+rwX tmp/
root # sudo -u git -H mkdir /home/git/gitlab-satellites
root # sudo -u git -H mkdir tmp/pids/
root # sudo -u git -H mkdir tmp/sockets/
root # chmod -R u+rwX tmp/pids/
root # chmod -R u+rwX tmp/sockets/
root # sudo -u git -H mkdir public/uploads
root # sudo chmod -R u+rwX public/uploads
There, a lot of groundwork done. Now we need to copy the example unicorn configuration and edit it (I didn't edit anything if I'm not mistaken, but ymmv):
root # sudo -u git -H cp config/unicorn.rb.example config/unicorn.rb
root # sudo -u git -H editor config/unicorn.rb
Next up is the Rack attack config:
root # sudo -u git -H cp config/initializers/rack_attack.rb.example config/initializers/rack_attack.rb
root # sudo -u git -H editor config/initializers/rack_attack.rb
Next up on the configuration is the database config. Ofcourse you need to configure the correct access credidentials. For MySQL:
root # sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.mysql config/database.yml
For PostgreSQL:
root # sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.postgresql config/database.yml
And edit config and make it read to git only afterwards:
root # sudo -u git -H editor config/database.yml
root # sudo -u git -H chmod o-rwx config/database.yml
Next up are the gems, I suggest you go make yourself a coffie while this runs:
For MySQL:
root # cd /home/git/gitlab
root # sudo -u git -H bundle install --deployment --without development test postgres aws
For PostgreSQL:
root # cd /home/git/gitlab
root # sudo -u git -H bundle install --deployment --without development test mysql aws
After that's done, we need to initialize the database and activate advanced features (oh my!). You'll need to follow the on-screen instructions and mark down the login.
root # cd /home/git/gitlab
root # sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production
There we're almost done.
Now we need to compile the assets:
root # sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=productionroot # ln -s /home/git/gitlab/lib/support/init.d/gitlab /etc/init.d/gitlab
root # update-rc.d gitlab defaults 21
root # service gitlab start
Next up is Logrotate:
root # ln -s /home/git/gitlab/lib/support/logrotate/gitlab /etc/logrotate.d/gitlab
Now you can check the application status (also handy later on):
root # cd /home/git/gitlab
root # sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:env:info RAILS_ENV=production
The final thing to do is to set up the nginx web server, we only skim this part, because there're a lot of good tutorial regarding this (you'll need to replace the hostname/subdomain to match what you used above).
root # apt-get install nginx
root # cp /home/git/gitlab/lib/support/nginx/gitlab /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab
root # edit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab
root # service nginx reload