GitLab Docker images

The GitLab Docker images are monolithic images of GitLab running all the necessary services in a single container.

Find the GitLab official Docker image at:

• GitLab Docker image in Docker Hub

The Docker images don’t include a mail transport agent (MTA). The recommended solution is to add an MTA (such as Postfix or Sendmail) running in a separate container. As another option, you can install an MTA directly in the GitLab container, but this adds maintenance overhead as you’ll likely need to reinstall the MTA after every upgrade or restart.

In the following examples, if you want to use the latest RC image, use gitlab/gitlab-ee:rc instead.

You should not deploy the GitLab Docker image in Kubernetes as it creates a single point of failure. If you want to deploy GitLab in Kubernetes, the GitLab Helm Chart or GitLab Operator should be used instead.

Prerequisites

Docker is required. See the official installation documentation .

Set up the volumes location

Before setting everything else, configure a new environment variable $GITLAB_HOME pointing to the directory where the configuration, logs, and data files will reside. Ensure that the directory exists and appropriate permission have been granted.

For Linux users, set the path to /srv/gitlab :

export GITLAB_HOME=/srv/gitlab

For macOS users, use the user’s $HOME/gitlab directory:

export GITLAB_HOME=$HOME/gitlab

The GitLab container uses host mounted volumes to store persistent data:

Installation

The GitLab Docker images can be run in multiple ways:

• Using Docker Engine
• Using Docker Compose
• Using Docker swarm mode

Install GitLab using Docker Engine

You can fine tune these directories to meet your requirements. Once you’ve set up the GITLAB_HOME variable, you can run the image:

sudo docker run --detach \
  --hostname gitlab.example.com \
  --publish 443:443 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
  --name gitlab \
  --restart always \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
  --shm-size 256m \
  gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest

This will download and start a GitLab container and publish ports needed to access SSH, HTTP and HTTPS. All GitLab data will be stored as subdirectories of $GITLAB_HOME . The container will automatically restart after a system reboot.

If you are on SELinux, then run this instead:

sudo docker run --detach \
  --hostname gitlab.example.com \
  --publish 443:443 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
  --name gitlab \
  --restart always \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab:Z \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab:Z \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab:Z \
  --shm-size 256m \
  gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest

This will ensure that the Docker process has enough permissions to create the configuration files in the mounted volumes.

If you’re using the Kerberos integration , you must also publish your Kerberos port (for example, --publish 8443:8443 ). Failing to do so prevents Git operations with Kerberos.

The initialization process may take a long time. You can track this process with:

sudo docker logs -f gitlab

After starting a container you can visit gitlab.example.com (or http://192.168.59.103 if you used boot2docker on macOS). It might take a while before the Docker container starts to respond to queries.

Visit the GitLab URL, and sign in with the username root and the password from the following command:

sudo docker exec -it gitlab grep 'Password:' /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password
The password file will be automatically deleted in the first reconfigure run after 24 hours.

Install GitLab using Docker Compose

With Docker Compose you can easily configure, install, and upgrade your Docker-based GitLab installation:

Install Docker Compose .

1. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

   version: '3.6'
   services:
     web:
       image: 'gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest'
       restart: always
       hostname: 'gitlab.example.com'
       environment:
         GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
           external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'
           # Add any other gitlab.rb configuration here, each on its own line
       ports:
         - '80:80'
         - '443:443'
         - '22:22'
       volumes:
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab'
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab'
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab'
       shm_size: '256m'
   Make sure you are in the same directory as docker-compose.yml and start
   GitLab:
   
   docker compose up -d
   Read the “Pre-configure Docker container” section
   to see how the GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG variable works.
   
   
   
   
       
   

   Below is another docker-compose.yml example with GitLab running on a custom HTTP and SSH port. Notice how the GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG variables match the ports section:

   version: '3.6'
   services:
     web:
       image: 'gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest'
       restart: always
       hostname: 'gitlab.example.com'
       environment:
         GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
           external_url 'http://gitlab.example.com:8929'
           gitlab_rails['gitlab_shell_ssh_port'] = 2224
       ports:
         - '8929:8929'
         - '2224:22'
       volumes:
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab'
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab'
         - '$GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab'
       shm_size: '256m'
   

   This is the same as using --publish 8929:8929 --publish 2224:22 .

   Install GitLab using Docker swarm mode

   With Docker swarm mode , you can easily configure and deploy your Docker-based GitLab installation in a swarm cluster.

   In swarm mode you can leverage Docker secrets and Docker configurations to efficiently and securely deploy your GitLab instance. Secrets can be used to securely pass your initial root password without exposing it as an environment variable. Configurations can help you to keep your GitLab image as generic as possible.

   Here’s an example that deploys GitLab with four runners as a stack , using secrets and configurations:

   Set up a Docker swarm .

   1. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

      version: "3.6"
      services:
        gitlab:
          image: gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
          ports:
            - "22:22"
            - "80:80"
            - "443:443"
          volumes:
            - $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab
            - $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab
            - $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab
          shm_size: '256m'
          environment:
            GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: "from_file('/omnibus_config.rb')"
          configs:
            - source: gitlab
              target: /omnibus_config.rb
          secrets:
            - gitlab_root_password
        gitlab-runner:
          image: gitlab/gitlab-runner:alpine
          deploy:
            mode: replicated
            replicas: 4
      configs:
        gitlab:
          file: ./gitlab.rb
      secrets:
        gitlab_root_password:
          file: ./root_password.txt
      

      For simplicity reasons, the network configuration was omitted. More information can be found in the official Compose file reference .

   2. Create a gitlab.rb file:

      external_url 'https://my.domain.com/'
      gitlab_rails['initial_root_password'] = File.read('/run/secrets/gitlab_root_password').gsub("\n", "")
      Create a root_password.txt file:
      
      MySuperSecretAndSecurePassw0rd!
      Make sure you are in the same directory as docker-compose.yml and run:
      
      docker stack deploy --compose-file docker-compose.yml mystack
      

   Install the product documentation

   This is an optional step. See how to self-host the product documentation .

   Configuration

   This container uses the official Omnibus GitLab package, so all configuration is done in the unique configuration file /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb .

   To access the GitLab configuration file, you can start a shell session in the context of a running container. This will allow you to browse all directories and use your favorite text editor:

   sudo docker exec -it gitlab /bin/bash
   

   You can also just edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb :

   sudo docker exec -it gitlab editor /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
   

   Once you open /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb make sure to set the external_url to point to a valid URL.

   To receive emails from GitLab you have to configure the SMTP settings because the GitLab Docker image doesn’t have an SMTP server installed. You may also be interested in enabling HTTPS .

   After you make all the changes you want, you will need to restart the container to reconfigure GitLab:

   sudo docker restart gitlab
   

   GitLab will reconfigure itself whenever the container starts. For more options about configuring GitLab, check the configuration documentation .

   Pre-configure Docker container

   You can pre-configure the GitLab Docker image by adding the environment variable GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG to Docker run command. This variable can contain any gitlab.rb setting and is evaluated before the loading of the container’s gitlab.rb file. This behavior allows you to configure the external GitLab URL, and make database configuration or any other option from the Omnibus GitLab template . The settings contained in GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG aren’t written to the gitlab.rb configuration file, and are evaluated on load.

   Here’s an example that sets the external URL and enables LFS while starting the container:

   sudo docker run --detach \
     --hostname gitlab.example.com \
     --env GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG="external_url 'http://my.domain.com/'; gitlab_rails['lfs_enabled'] = true;" \
     --publish 443:443 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
     --name gitlab \
     --restart always \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
     --shm-size 256m \
     gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
   

   Every time you execute a docker run command, you need to provide the GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG option. The content of GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG is not preserved between subsequent runs.

   Use tagged versions of GitLab

   Tagged versions of the GitLab Docker images are also provided. To see all available tags see:

   • GitLab CE tags
   • GitLab EE tags

   To use a specific tagged version, replace gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest with the GitLab version you want to run, for example gitlab/gitlab-ee:12.1.3-ce.0 .

   Run GitLab on a public IP address

   You can make Docker to use your IP address and forward all traffic to the GitLab container by modifying the --publish flag.

   To expose GitLab on IP 198.51.100.1 :

   sudo docker run --detach \
     --hostname gitlab.example.com \
     --publish 198.51.100.1:443:443 \
     --publish 198.51.100.1:80:80 \
     --publish 198.51.100.1:22:22 \
     --name gitlab \
     --restart always \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
     --shm-size 256m \
     gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
   

   You can then access your GitLab instance at http://198.51.100.1/ and https://198.51.100.1/ .

   Expose GitLab on different ports

   GitLab will occupy some ports inside the container.

   If you want to use a different host port than 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS), you need to add a separate --publish directive to the docker run command.

   For example, to expose the web interface on the host’s port 8929 , and the SSH service on port 2289 :

   Use the following docker run command:

   sudo docker run --detach \
     --hostname gitlab.example.com \
     --publish 8929:8929 --publish 2289:22 \
     --name gitlab \
     --restart always \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
     --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
     --shm-size 256m \
     gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
   The format for publishing ports is hostPort:containerPort. Read more in the
   Docker documentation about
   exposing incoming ports.

2. Enter the running container:

   sudo docker exec -it gitlab /bin/bash
   Open /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb with your editor and set external_url:
   
   # For HTTP
   external_url "http://gitlab.example.com:8929"
   # For HTTPS (notice the https)
   external_url "https://gitlab.example.com:8929"
   The port specified in this URL must match the port published to the host by Docker.
   Additionally, if the NGINX listen port is not explicitly set in
   nginx['listen_port'], it will be pulled from the external_url.
   For more information see the NGINX documentation.

3. Set gitlab_shell_ssh_port :

   gitlab_rails['gitlab_shell_ssh_port'] = 2289
   Finally, reconfigure GitLab:
   
   gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

Following the above example, you will be able to reach GitLab from your web browser under <hostIP>:8929 and push using SSH under the port 2289 .

A docker-compose.yml example that uses different ports can be found in the Docker compose section.

Configure multiple database connections

In GitLab 16.0, GitLab will default to using two database connections that point to the same PostgreSQL database.

If you want to opt-in for this feature:

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb inside the container:

sudo docker exec -it gitlab editor /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
Add the following line:

gitlab_rails['databases']['ci']['enable'] = true
Restart the container:

sudo docker restart gitlab

Upgrade

In most cases, upgrading GitLab is as easy as downloading the newest Docker image tag .

Upgrade GitLab using Docker Engine

To upgrade GitLab that was installed using Docker Engine :

Take a backup . As a minimum, back up the database and the GitLab secrets file.

1. Stop the running container:

   sudo docker stop gitlab
   Remove the existing container:
   
   sudo docker rm gitlab
   Pull the new image. For example, the latest GitLab image:
   
   sudo docker pull gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
   Create the container once again with the
   previously specified options:
   
   sudo docker run --detach \
   --hostname gitlab.example.com \
   --publish 443:443 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
   --name gitlab \
   --restart always \
   --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
   --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
   --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
   --shm-size 256m \
   gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest
   
   
   
   
   
       
   

On the first run, GitLab will reconfigure and upgrade itself.

Refer to the GitLab Upgrade recommendations when upgrading between major versions.

Upgrade GitLab using Docker compose

To upgrade GitLab that was installed using Docker Compose :

Take a backup . As a minimum, back up the database and the GitLab secrets file.

1. Download the newest release and upgrade your GitLab instance:

   docker compose pull
   docker compose up -d
   

   If you have used tags instead, you’ll need to first edit docker-compose.yml .

Convert Community Edition to Enterprise Edition

You can convert an existing Docker-based GitLab Community Edition (CE) container to a GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) container using the same approach as upgrading the version .

We recommend you convert from the same version of CE to EE (for example, CE 14.1 to EE 14.1). This is not explicitly necessary, and any standard upgrade (for example, CE 14.0 to EE 14.1) should work. The following steps assume that you are upgrading the same version.

Take a backup . As a minimum, back up the database and the GitLab secrets file.

1. Stop the current CE container, and remove or rename it.

2. To create a new container with GitLab EE, replace ce with ee in your docker run command or docker-compose.yml file. However, reuse the CE container name, port and file mappings, and version.

Upgrade the product documentation

This is an optional step. If you installed the documentation site , see how to upgrade to another version .

Downgrade GitLab

To downgrade GitLab after an upgrade:

Follow the upgrade procedure, but specify the tag for the original version of GitLab instead of latest .

1. Restore the database backup you made as part of the upgrade.

   • Restoring is required to back out database data and schema changes (migrations) made as part of the upgrade.
   • GitLab backups must be restored to the exact same version and edition.
   • Follow the restore steps for Docker images , including stopping Puma and Sidekiq. Only the database must be restored, so add SKIP=artifacts,repositories,registry,uploads,builds,pages,lfs,packages,terraform_state to the gitlab-backup restore command line arguments.

Back up GitLab

You can create a GitLab backup with:

docker exec -t <container name> gitlab-backup create

Read more on how to back up and restore GitLab .

Create a database backup

A database backup is required to roll back GitLab upgrade if you encounter issues.

docker exec -t <container name> gitlab-backup create SKIP=artifacts,repositories,registry,uploads,builds,pages,lfs,packages,terraform_state

The backup is written to /var/opt/gitlab/backups which should be on a volume mounted by Docker .

Installing GitLab Community Edition

GitLab CE Docker image

To install the Community Edition, replace ee with ce in the commands on this page.

Troubleshooting

The following information will help if you encounter problems using Omnibus GitLab and Docker.

Diagnose potential problems

Read container logs:

sudo docker logs gitlab

Enter running container:

sudo docker exec -it gitlab /bin/bash

From within the container you can administer the GitLab container as you would usually administer an Omnibus installation

500 Internal Error

When updating the Docker image you may encounter an issue where all paths display a 500 page. If this occurs, restart the container to try to rectify the issue:

sudo docker restart gitlab

Permission problems

When updating from older GitLab Docker images you might encounter permission problems. This happens when users in previous images were not preserved correctly. There’s script that fixes permissions for all files.

To fix your container, execute update-permissions and restart the container afterwards:

sudo docker exec gitlab update-permissions
sudo docker restart gitlab

Windows/Mac: Error executing action run on resource ruby_block[directory resource: /data/GitLab]

This error occurs when using Docker Toolbox with VirtualBox on Windows or Mac, and making use of Docker volumes. The /c/Users volume is mounted as a VirtualBox Shared Folder, and does not support the all POSIX file system features. The directory ownership and permissions cannot be changed without remounting, and GitLab fails.

Our recommendation is to switch to using the native Docker install for your platform, instead of using Docker Toolbox.

If you cannot use the native Docker install (Windows 10 Home Edition, or Windows 7/8), then an alternative solution is to setup NFS mounts instead of VirtualBox shares for Docker Toolbox’s boot2docker.

Linux ACL issues

If you are using file ACLs on the Docker host, the docker group requires full access to the volumes in order for GitLab to work:

getfacl $GITLAB_HOME
# file: $GITLAB_HOME
# owner: XXXX
# group: XXXX
user::rwx
group::rwx
group:docker:rwx
mask::rwx
default:user::rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:docker:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::r-x

If these are not correct, set them with:

sudo setfacl -mR default:group:docker:rwx $GITLAB_HOME

The default group is docker . If you changed the group, be sure to update your commands.

/dev/shm mount not having enough space in Docker container

GitLab comes with a Prometheus metrics endpoint at /-/metrics to expose a variety of statistics on the health and performance of GitLab. The files required for this gets written to a temporary file system (like /run or /dev/shm ).

By default, Docker allocates 64 MB to the shared memory directory (mounted at /dev/shm ). This is insufficient to hold all the Prometheus metrics related files generated, and will generate error logs like the following:

writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/gauge_all_sidekiq_0-1.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/gauge_all_sidekiq_0-1.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/gauge_all_sidekiq_0-1.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/histogram_sidekiq_0-0.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/histogram_sidekiq_0-0.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/histogram_sidekiq_0-0.db failed with unmapped file
writing value to /dev/shm/gitlab/sidekiq/histogram_sidekiq_0-0.db failed with unmapped file

Other than disabling the Prometheus Metrics from the Admin Area, the recommended solution to fix this problem is to increase the size of shared memory to at least 256 MB. If using docker run , this can be done by passing the flag --shm-size 256m . If using a docker-compose.yml file, the shm_size key can be used for this purpose.

Docker containers exhausts space due to the json-file

Docker uses the json-file default logging driver , which performs no log rotation by default. As a result of this lack of rotation, log files stored by the json-file driver can consume a significant amount of disk space for containers that generate a lot of output. This can lead to disk space exhaustion. To address this, use journald as the logging driver when available, or another supported driver with native rotation support.

Buffer overflow error when starting Docker

If you receive this buffer overflow error, you should purge old log files in /var/log/gitlab :

buffer overflow detected : terminated
xargs: tail: terminated by signal 6

Removing old log files helps fix the error, and ensures a clean startup of the instance.