Gitlab is a git front end with repository management, graphs, links, goodies, commands to run, and review capabilities similar in feel to a self-hosted ?GitHub.

See /omnibus if you are looking for instructions to install upstream provided packages.

New upstream releases (including security updates) are announced at https://about.gitlab.com/releases/categories/releases/.

Debian is running its own Instance of GitLab under https://salsa.debian.org, which is not based on the packaged version.

Note 1: For a smooth upgrade experience, always stay on the latest major version of gitlab. For example, if latest version of gitlab is 12.0.0 and you are currently on 11.3.6, then update to 12.0.0 as soon as possible, certainly before the debian package is updated to 13.x. Ideally, you should update as soon as a new version with security updates is available.

Note 2: It is recommended to subscribe to changes in this wiki page or frequently check this page for updates. Alternatively, you can subscribe to https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gitlab to get notified when new versions are uploaded.

New changes

  1. New in gitlab 13.3.8-1: You will need to install grpc gem from rubygems.org gem install -v 1.30.2 grpc (more details below). If you run gitaly on a different machine, you will need to do this on that machine as well.

  2. New in gitlab 13.2.6-3: We have switched to puma as application server replacing unicorn. Upstream already made the switch from 12.9 and unicorn support will be dropped in gitlab 14.0. They saw a memory reduction of 37% in gitlab.com after the switch. See more details about this switch at this upstream blog post https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/07/08/migrating-to-puma-on-gitlab/. puma defaults to listening only on unix sockets and if you are running gitaly on a different machine, then you will have to edit /etc/gitlab/puma.rb to bind to tcp:// url as well.

  3. New in gitlab 13.2.3

Buster Fast Track (Recommended)

Gitlab 13.6.7 is available in unofficial fasttrack repo targeting buster as base distribution. (no open security issues).

A video demo of the whole installation process with commentary on packaging challenges and troubleshooting steps is available on Debian Social Peertube instance.

Some packages are still needed from personal repo of gitlab maintainer because golang packages cannot be uploaded in fasttrack.debian.net because of a bug in dak setup. Please note the new URL of this repo if you are upgrading from an older version (people.debian.org/~praveen/gitlab is now people.debian.org/~praveen/gitaly and gpg key used for signing is also changed).

Make sure contrib section is enabled for buster and buster/updates

Modify /etc/apt/sources.list to add official buster-backports and contrib section if missing:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib 

From gitlab 13.2.3

Now gitaly is also built with ruby2.7 so it is now moved to buster-fasttrack from buster-backports. See the new repository link below.

Import fasttrack archive keyring:

# apt -t buster-backports install fasttrack-archive-keyring

And add the following lines for fasttrack repo:

deb https://fasttrack.debian.net/debian/ buster-fasttrack main contrib
# For dependency packages not in testing only temporarily due to freeze, transitions or delayed by backports-new or NEW.
deb https://fasttrack.debian.net/debian/ buster-backports main contrib

Eventually the packages in this repo will be moved to fasttrack or official backports after fixing https://salsa.debian.org/fasttrack-team/support/-/issues/8 (Need help)

deb https://people.debian.org/~praveen/gitaly buster-backports main
deb https://people.debian.org/~praveen/gitaly buster-fasttrack main

Optional: To avoid some hours of delay between upload and availability in archive

deb http://incoming.debian.org/debian-buildd buildd-buster-backports main contrib

Refresh list of available packages:

# apt update

You may encounter the following error message:

The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 0B76920762A6B785

If so, these commands can help (trust these repositories):

# wget https://people.debian.org/~praveen/gitaly/praveen.key.new.asc
# apt-key add praveen.key.new.asc

If you are upgrading ruby version to 2.7 (if your current ruby version is 2.5), you will need to use dist-upgrade first. Make sure /var/lib/gems/2.5.0/ is empty if you see any issues after the ruby version upgrade.

See https://git.fosscommunity.in/debian-ruby/TaskTracker/-/issues/166 for current status of ruby 2.7 in fasttrack.

sassc regression

Currently gitlab installation is broken due to libsass in buster-backports . See 953415 for more details.

A work around is to downgrade libsass and libsass-dev to versions in buster and hold it at the older version.

# apt install libsass1/buster libsass-dev/buster && apt-mark hold libsass1 libsass-dev

gitlab crash work around (install grpc from rubygems.org)

To avoid installation crashing with an error message like,

/usr/share/rubygems-integration/all/gems/gitaly-13.4.6/ruby/proto/gitaly/lint_pb.rb:17: [BUG] Segmentation fault at 0x0000000000000000
ruby 2.7.2p137 (2020-10-01 revision 5445e04352) [x86_64-linux-gnu]

We have to use versions of grpc from rubygems.org (don't forget to remove this version when ruby-grpc is fixed in debian)

# apt -t buster-fasttrack install ruby2.7

# gem install -v 1.30.2 grpc

and follow gitlab#manually_installing_ruby_dependencies if you are seeing this crash again

See 966653 for details.

Use apt pinning for resolving dependencies

See 983129 for details of using apt pinning.

Upgrading along with ruby

If you are installing for the first time, skip this section.

Using apt

# apt -t buster-fasttrack dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libruby2.5 ruby-did-you-mean ruby-trollop ruby2.5-dev ruby2.5-doc
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  ruby2.5
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libruby2.7 ruby-optimist ruby2.7 ruby2.7-dev ruby2.7-doc
The following packages have been kept back:
  gitlab
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apt exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light libapt-pkg5.0 libdns-export1104 libgrpc9 libisc-export1100 puma ruby
  ruby-atomic ruby-bcrypt ruby-bcrypt-pbkdf ruby-bootsnap ruby-bson ruby-character-set ruby-charlock-holmes
  ruby-commonmarker ruby-concurrent ruby-concurrent-ext ruby-dev ruby-ed25519 ruby-enumerable-statistics
  ruby-escape-utils ruby-fast-blank ruby-ffi ruby-github-linguist ruby-google-protobuf ruby-gpgme ruby-grpc
  ruby-hamlit ruby-hitimes ruby-json ruby-kgio ruby-msgpack ruby-murmurhash3 ruby-nio4r ruby-nokogiri ruby-nokogumbo
  ruby-oj ruby-pg ruby-posix-spawn ruby-prof ruby-prometheus-client-mmap ruby-raindrops ruby-rbtrace ruby-re2
  ruby-redcarpet ruby-redcloth ruby-regexp-property-values ruby-rinku ruby-rugged ruby-sqlite3 ruby-stackprof
  ruby-thrift ruby-timfel-krb5-auth ruby-unf-ext ruby-unicode ruby-version-sorter ruby-vmstat ruby-websocket-driver
  ruby-yajl rubygems-integration unicorn
64 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 1 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 20.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 44.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

Now install gitlab:

# apt -t buster-backports install gitlab/buster-fasttrack gitaly/buster-fasttrack \
ruby-gitaly/buster-fasttrack ruby-kramdown/buster-fasttrack \
ruby-js-regex/buster-fasttrack ruby-yajl/buster-fasttrack

Using aptitude

# aptitude -t buster-fasttrack dist-upgrade
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libruby2.7{a} ruby-optimist{a} ruby2.7{a} ruby2.7-dev{a} ruby2.7-doc{a} 
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libruby2.5{u} ruby-did-you-mean{u} ruby-trollop{u} ruby2.5{u} ruby2.5-dev{u} ruby2.5-doc{u} 
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apt exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light gitlab libapt-pkg5.0 libdns-export1104 libgrpc9 libisc-export1100 
  puma ruby ruby-atomic ruby-bcrypt ruby-bcrypt-pbkdf ruby-bootsnap ruby-bson ruby-character-set 
  ruby-charlock-holmes ruby-commonmarker ruby-concurrent ruby-concurrent-ext ruby-dev ruby-ed25519 
  ruby-enumerable-statistics ruby-escape-utils ruby-fast-blank ruby-ffi ruby-github-linguist ruby-google-protobuf 
  ruby-gpgme ruby-grpc ruby-hamlit ruby-hitimes ruby-json ruby-kgio ruby-msgpack ruby-murmurhash3 ruby-nio4r 
  ruby-nokogiri ruby-nokogumbo ruby-oj ruby-pg ruby-posix-spawn ruby-prof ruby-prometheus-client-mmap 
  ruby-raindrops ruby-rbtrace ruby-re2 ruby-redcarpet ruby-redcloth ruby-regexp-property-values ruby-rinku 
  ruby-rugged ruby-sqlite3 ruby-stackprof ruby-thrift ruby-timfel-krb5-auth ruby-unf-ext ruby-unicode 
  ruby-version-sorter ruby-vmstat ruby-websocket-driver ruby-yajl rubygems-integration unicorn 
65 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 6 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 106 MB of archives. After unpacking 9,644 kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]  

New installations

Using apt

At this point, it seems apt cannot resolve the dependencies correctly, see section below to use aptitude or manually specifiy the list of dependencies to install.

# apt -t buster-fasttrack install ruby-rugged
# apt -t buster-fasttrack install puma ruby ruby-actioncable ruby-actionmailbox \
ruby-actionmailer ruby-actionpack ruby-actiontext ruby-actionview ruby-activestorage \
ruby-atomic ruby-bcrypt ruby-bcrypt-pbkdf ruby-bootsnap ruby-bson ruby-character-set \
ruby-charlock-holmes ruby-commonmarker ruby-concurrent ruby-concurrent-ext \
ruby-dev ruby-ed25519 ruby-enumerable-statistics ruby-escape-utils \
ruby-fast-blank ruby-ffi ruby-github-linguist ruby-gollum-lib ruby-google-protobuf ruby-gpgme \
ruby-grpc ruby-hamlit ruby-hitimes ruby-murmurhash3 ruby-json ruby-kgio ruby-kramdown \
ruby-msgpack ruby-murmurhash3 ruby-nio4r ruby-nokogiri ruby-nokogumbo ruby-oj \
ruby-pg ruby-posix-spawn ruby-prof ruby-prometheus-client-mmap ruby-raindrops \
ruby-rails ruby-railties ruby-rbtrace ruby-re2 ruby-redcarpet ruby-redcloth \
ruby-regexp-property-values ruby-rinku ruby-sidekiq ruby-sqlite3 \
ruby-stackprof ruby-thrift ruby-timfel-krb5-auth ruby-unf-ext ruby-unicode \
ruby-version-sorter ruby-vmstat ruby-websocket-driver ruby-yajl \
rubygems-integration unicorn ruby-js-regex ruby-gollum-rugged-adapter/buster-backports \
ruby-loofah/buster-backports ruby-rack/buster-backports ruby-rails-html-sanitizer/buster-backports \
ruby-regexp-parser/buster-backports ruby-temple/buster-backports ruby-thor/buster-backports

and install gitlab:

# apt -t buster-backports install gitlab/buster-fasttrack ruby-hamlit/buster-fasttrack ruby-sanitize/buster-fasttrack ruby-gitaly/buster-fasttrack gitaly/buster-fasttrack

Using aptitude (broken currently, use apt)

# aptitude -t buster-backports install gitlab/buster-fasttrack

and choose n for first choice and then Y to prefer packages from fasttrack when it is available in both backports and fasttrack.

apt priority for buster-fasttrack is lowered to 100 from 500 to match buster-backports settings.

Note: https://gitlab.debian.net is running on this version.

Buster Fast Track Staging

gitlab 13.6.7 is available in fasttrack-staging (no open security issues).

If you'd like to test gitlab packages before they are uploaded to buster-fasttrack, you can add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.

deb https://people.debian.org/~praveen/fasttrack-staging buster-backports main contrib
deb https://people.debian.org/~praveen/fasttrack-staging buster-fasttrack main contrib

and install gitlab

apt -t buster-backports install gitlab/buster-fasttrack gitaly/buster-fasttrack

Unstable (be careful when updating packages)

Gitlab 13.4.7 is available in unstable (many security release behind, see experimental).

We try to keep the version in unstable in a good shape with the latest security updates, but some times dependency updates break GitLab.

Now install gitlab

# apt install gitlab

Known Issues

Currently gitlab installation is broken due to a change in libsass. See 953415 for more details.

A work around is to downgrade libsass and libsass-dev to 3.6.1. Use http://snapshot.debian.org/package/libsass/3.6.1-1/ and hold it at the older version.

# apt-mark hold libsass1 libsass-dev

Experimental - During freeze and transitions

gitlab 13.6.7 is available in experimental (no open security issues). But this version is not yet compatible with rugged/libgit2 1.x so not recommended (See 979563)

If you are using experimental for the first time, check DebianExperimental.

You will have to follow the notes mentioned in unstable section above.

Gitlab on Stretch

This is moved to gitlab/stretch now.

Gitlab with apache2

Gitlab can use apache instead of nginx. To get a working configuration for your version the best thing to do is to follow the (gitlab-recipes repository) instructions.

Basically you will have to : Disable nginx Set www-data as web server user. Allow Modules dependencies # mod_rewrite # mod_ssl # mod_proxy # mod_proxy_http # mod_headers

a2enmod rewrite proxy_http headers

and as says in recipe

Allow gitlab-workhorse to listen on port 8181, edit or create /etc/default/gitlab and change or add the following:

 gitlab_workhorse_options="-listenUmask 0 -listenNetwork tcp -listenAddr 127.0.0.1:8181 -authBackend http://127.0.0.1:8080"

Gitlab Common Errors

If you have this kind of error

  Cloning into'public-test-project-ssh'...
  Received disconnect from YOUR_SERVER_IP port 22:2: Too many authentication failures
  Disconnected from YOUR_SERVER_IP port 22
  fatal: Can't read distant repository.

on an ssh clone

  git clone gitlab@ssh.your-gitlab-instance.org:public-test-group/public-test-project.git public-test-project-ssh

Note : In your command line host should match your ssh hostname for gitlab as group and project name.

To be sure you should find a line like the following in /var/log/auth.log

User gitlab from YOUR_CLIENT_IP not allowed because not listed in AllowUsers

You may have to allow gitlab user in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

AllowUsers user1 user2 gitlab
AllowGroups user1 group2 gitlab

Note : user1, user2, group2 are here for the example adapt to your setup.

Do not forget to restart the service

service ssh restart

Debug installation and configuration

Gitlab is composed of several parts. As always logs (/var/log/gitlab), debian specific documentation (/usr/share/doc/gitlab/) and (official) documentation provide lots of information.

gitlab-rake is convenience script to easily run rake commands provided by gitlab in debian environment.

# gitlab-rake gitlab:check
# gitlab-rake gitlab:env:info

gitlab-rails-console is another convenience script to launch a rails console in gitlab debian environment.

# gitlab-rails-console

Just make sure you don't have any gems installed from rubygems.org conflicting with debian packaged versions of the gems required by gitlab. /var/lib/gems/<ruby_version> (/var/lib/gems/2.5.0 or /var/lib/gems/2.7.0) should not have any gems.

rake aborted errors during installation

If your update failed for some reason (usually when dependencies are not satisfied for bundle install --local), and you retry installation after fixing dependencies, you may see errors like

rake aborted!
NameError: uninitialized constant Gitlab::Patch::ActiveRecordQueryCache
/usr/share/gitlab/config/initializers/active_record_query_cache.rb:3:in `<top (required)>'

You will have to manually remove problem creating initializers from /etc/gitlab/initializers. A list of such initializers can be found from gitlab source package or from https://salsa.debian.org/ruby-team/gitlab in debian/maintscript` file.

All lines starting with rm_conffile and corresponding versions are what you need to check.

Additionally, if there is any extra files present in your system at /etc/gitlab/initializers that is not installed by the current package as shown in dpkg -L gitlab | grep '/etc/gitlab/initializers', you need to remove that. We usually try to remove obsolete initializers automatically, but sometimes we miss some files.

The following command returns the list of obsolete initializer files:

for fname in /etc/gitlab/initializers/*; do dpkg -L gitlab | grep -qFx "$fname" || echo "$fname"; done

manually installing ruby dependencies

When ruby dependencies are installed manually, we need to update gitlab and gitaly's Gemfile.lock to use the recently installed version. See 944698 for details.

cd /usr/share/gitlab
truncate -s0 Gemfile.lock
sudo -u gitlab bundle install --local # use the gitlab username instead of gitlab if you changed it
cd /usr/share/gitaly/ruby
truncate -s0 Gemfile.lock
sudo -u gitlab bundle install --local # use the gitlab username instead of gitlab if you changed it

Contact maintainers

You can reach the maintainers of the gitlab package via https://wiki.debian.org/gitlab/BackportChecklist

  1. Matrix at #debian-gitlab:poddery.com (join via browser)

  2. IRC #debian-gitlab on OFTC network (join via browser)

Maintainer's corner

  1. Installing gitlab on an lxc container to test - See gitlab/lxc

  2. Backport/Fasttrack checklist - See gitlab/BackportChecklist

  3. Dependencies Transitions checklist - See gitlab/DependenciesTransitions

  4. Managing Components - See gitlab/ManagingComponents

  5. Mixing apt and yarn installed node modules - See gitlab/yarn

  6. Manually running webpack to troubleshoot bundling issues - See gitlab/webpack

TODO

  1. Aim to get gitlab back in main by bullseye release by packaging all node dependencies. current status This is now an Outreachy project (from December 2019 to March 2020).

  2. Get autopkgtest working so we can detect problems when someone updates dependencies without coordinating with us. Current Status

Prioritizing tasks

We should try to pick tasks according to the following priority list,

  1. Update to latest security release (in unstable/experimental and fasttrack). Remember to add the CVEs fixed in the release (listed in the release blog post) to debian/changelog. Subscribe to Security Alerts: Notification alerts to critical security updates. at https://about.gitlab.com/company/preference-center/ to get notified by email about new security releases. Usually we have security releases once or twice per month.

  2. Update to next feature release (in unstable/experimental and fasttrack) before support for current stable release ends (usually 3 months). See Teams/Ruby/Packaging/newUpstreamRailsApp.

  3. We should try to keep the same upstream version in both unstable/experimental and fasttrack to avoid maintaining two versions. This means not starting a feature update close to a scheduled security release (usually at the end or starting of every month). Because a feature update may take more days to complete and involve complexities compared to a security update.
  4. Getting packages from experimental to unstable can take time as it involves transitions and coordinating with many others, so we should prioritize moving directly from experimental to fasttrack before we attempt moving from experimental to unstable.
  5. Package remaining node modules and switch to packaged versions. Update 0740-use-packaged-modules.patch by removing the newly packaged module from package.json and adding it to Depends in debian/control. It is better to backport the packaged modules first to avoid updates getting blocked (sometimes you may need to backport a large number of build dependencies). See https://git.fosscommunity.in/debian-ruby/TaskTracker/-/issues/175