How to install gitlab on Ubuntu Server 12.04 (precise) the right way

This weekend I’ve been installing Gitlab on a LXC guest. The host is running Ubuntu 12.04 and so is the guest. I tried to document my steps the best I could so I could share my experiences with it. Sometimes I had to go back a few steps so maybe something are garbled up but I believe this is still a good starting point on setting up gitlab on a Ubuntu server.

My main goals were:

• use as much software from the Ubuntu repositories as possible so I don’t have to worry about security updates et cetera
• keep the installation as simple as possible so I know when I look at it over 6 months
• keep the software (gitolite) in the default Ubuntu location(s)

The steps found on the Gitlab website are quite accurate so keep them in mind:

1. login as user, install git & generate ssh key
2. Install ruby 1.9.2
3. Install gitolite with umask 0007 and add your user to git group
4. logout & login again
5. Clone & setup gitlab (checkout project wiki on github)
6. Start server. Enjoy!

My global setup

• Installed Gitolite, Redis and Ruby from the default Ubuntu repositories
• Installed Nginx (nginx-full) with Ruby/Phusion Passenger support from the Brightbox testing repositories (stable didn’t yet support Ubuntu 12.04 Precise)
• Gitlab + dependencies are managed by bundler (build from source)
• Nginx is running as the gitlab user

Step 1: installing Nginx with Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) support on Ubuntu 12.04

add-apt-repository ppa:brightbox/passenger-nginx-testing
apt-get update
apt-get install nginx-full
cat <<EOF > /etc/nginx/conf.d/passenger.conf
passenger_root /usr/lib/phusion-passenger;
EOF

I had some troubles with this version of Nginx from Brightbox because of some missing mime-type config file. That was quickly solved by copying it from another server.

The configuration file of my gitlab virtual host I put in: /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab.host.tld.

The contents of that file can be found here.

Step 2: installing dependencies from Ubuntu sources

apt-get install gitolite ruby1.9.3 redis-server ruby-budler rake

For the gitolite configure screens: just keep hitting enter

Step 3: installing build dependencies for ruby gems needed by gitlab

apt-get install make libxml2-dev g++ libicu-dev ruby2.9.1-dev libmysqlclient-dev libsqlite3-dev

Step 4: setting up your gitlab user: creating it, giving it permissions and generating a ssh key

adduser --disabled-login --disabled-password --force-badname gitlab.host.tld
usermod --append --groups gitolite gitlab.host.tld
su -s /bin/bash gitlab.host.tld
ssh-keygen
exit

Step 5: configuring gitolite with the ssh public key of your gitlab user

(as root)

dpkg-reconfigure gitolite

The question about the public key can be answered with the contents of `/home/gitlab.host.tld/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`

Step 6: loosening the permissions so the gitlab user can reach the gitolite files

Only do this when you know what you’re doing!

chmod g+rw /var/lib/gitolite/repositories --recursive
chmod g+rw /var/lib/gitolite/.gitolite.rc

This works because we added our user gitlab.host.tld to the gitolite group remember?

Next: edit /var/lib/gitolite/.gitolite.rc and change this line:

$REPO_UMASK = 0077; # gets you 'rwx------'

to:

$REPO_UMASK = 0007; # rwxrwx---

This makes sure newly created files/directories by gitolite are also writable by the gitolite group.

Step 7: installing gitlab itself

If everything worked out the system is ready and gitlab itself can be installed:

su -s /bin/bash gitlab.host.tld
cd ~/public_html
git clone git://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq.git .

Step 8: Install the gitlab dependencies

This one is tricky. Maybe I forgot to list some build dependencies or maybe the added some extra dependencies since I wrote this. If this doesn’t succeed: read the logs (especially mkfm.log).

bundle install --deployment

Step 9: configure gitlab

cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
cp config/gitlab.yml.example config/gitlab.yml

Here is my gitlab.yml

It has admin_uri defined twice because of bug #1052
If you wouldn’t define it twice (in git_host and git) the rake task `gitlab:app:status` would always fail when you run gitolite under the user `gitolite`.

You can find out the contents of your own database.yml

Step 10: installing the database and compiling the assets

bundle exec rake db:setup RAILS_ENV=production
bundle exec rake db:seed_fu RAILS_ENV=production
rake assets:precompile

Step 11: check if your gitlab user has access to gitolite

RAILS_ENV=production rake gitlab:app:status

Rembember bug #1052!

Step 12: starting resque workers

Start at least one resque worker:

./resque.sh

And maybe another one:

./resque.sh

The resque workers are background workers that do `stuff` in the background. I believe for example the adding of ssh keys to gitolite and the parsing of a commit and putting that in the database.

At first I forget to start the resque workers and my keys weren’t properly added to gitolite. The solution to that was in my case:

RAILS_ENV=production rake gitlab:gitolite:update_hooks
RAILS_ENV=production rake gitlab:gitolite:update_keys
RAILS_ENV=production rake gitlab:gitolite:update_repos

Step 13: restart nginx & surf to http://gitlab.host.tld

The title says it all

Finally

I copied all the commands from the servers’ bash history command. The order of the commands I wrote down on top of my head so there could be some mistakes there. If you spot something wrong or missing: just contact me of leave a comment.

Some excellent resources:

• http://blog.phusion.nl/2012/04/21/tutorial-setting-up-gitlab-on-debian-6/
• https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/wiki