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Docker Desktop for Windows includes Compose along with other Docker apps, so most Windows users do not need to install Compose separately. For install instructions, see Install Docker Desktop on Windows. If you are running the Docker daemon and client directly on Microsoft Windows Server, follow the instructions in the Windows Server tab. Docker Desktop for Windows includes Compose along with other Docker apps, so most Windows users do not need to install Compose separately. For install instructions, see Install Docker Desktop on Windows. If you are running the Docker daemon and client directly on Microsoft Windows Server, follow the instructions in the Windows Server tab.

• Installation
• Configuration
• Update
• Troubleshooting

The GitLab Docker images are monolithic images of GitLab running all thenecessary services in a single container. If you instead want to install GitLabon Kubernetes, see GitLab Helm Charts.

Find the GitLab official Docker image at:

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

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

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

Installation

The GitLab Docker images can be run in multiple ways:

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:

This will download and start a GitLab container and publish ports needed toaccess 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:

This will ensure that the Docker process has enough permissions to create theconfig 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 thisprocess with:

After starting a container you can visit gitlab.example.com (orhttp://192.168.59.103 if you used boot2docker on macOS). It might take a whilebefore the Docker container starts to respond to queries.The very first time you visit GitLab, you will be asked to set up the adminpassword. After you change it, you can log in with username root and thepassword you set up.

Install GitLab using Docker Compose

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

1. Install Docker Compose.

2. Create a docker-compose.yml file (or download an example):

3. Make sure you are in the same directory as docker-compose.yml and startGitLab:

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

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

Install GitLab using Docker swarm mode

With Docker swarm mode, you can easilyconfigure and deploy yourDocker-based GitLab installation in a swarm cluster.

In swarm mode you can leverage Docker secretsand Docker configs 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.Configs 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 configs:

1. Set up a Docker swarm.

2. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

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

3. Create a gitlab.rb file:

4. Create a root_password.txt file:

5. Make sure you are in the same directory as docker-compose.yml and run:

Configuration

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

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

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

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

To receive e-mails from GitLab you have to configure theSMTP settings because the GitLab Docker image doesn’thave an SMTP server installed. You may also be interested inenabling HTTPS.

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

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

Pre-configure Docker container

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

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

Note that every time you execute a docker run command, you need to providethe GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG option. The content of GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG isnot 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:

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

Docker Docs Install Ubuntu

Run GitLab on a public IP address

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

To expose GitLab on IP 198.51.100.1:

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 portsinside 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 onport 2289:

1. Use the following docker run command:

   The format for publishing ports is hostPort:containerPort. Read more inDocker’s documentation aboutexposing incoming ports.

2. Enter the running container:

3. Open /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb with your editor and set external_url:

   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 innginx['listen_port'], it will be pulled from the external_url.For more information see the NGINX documentation.

4. Set gitlab_shell_ssh_port:

5. Finally, reconfigure GitLab:

Following the above example, you will be able to reach GitLab from yourweb 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 theDocker compose section.

Update

In most cases, updating GitLab is as easy as downloading the newest Dockerimage tag.

Update GitLab using Docker Engine

To update GitLab that was installed using Docker Engine:

1. Take a backup.

2. Stop the running container:

3. Remove the existing container:

4. Pull the new image. For example, the latest GitLab image:

5. Create the container once again with thepreviously specified options:

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

Refer to the GitLab Upgrade recommendationswhen upgrading between major versions.

Update GitLab using Docker compose

To update GitLab that was installed using Docker Compose:

1. Take a backup.

2. Download the newest release and update your GitLab instance:

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

Back up GitLab

You can create a GitLab backup with:

Read more on how to back up and restore GitLab.

Installing GitLab Community Edition

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

Troubleshooting

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

Diagnose potential problems

Read container logs:

Enter running container:

From within the container you can administer the GitLab container as you wouldnormally administer anOmnibus installation

500 Internal Error

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

Permission problems

When updating from older GitLab Docker images you might encounter permissionproblems. This happens when users in previous images were notpreserved correctly. There’s script that fixes permissions for all files.

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

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 aVirtualBox Shared Folder, and does not support the all POSIX filesystem features.The directory ownership and permissions cannot be changed without remounting, andGitLab fails.

Our recommendation is to switch to using the native Docker install for yourplatform, 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 forDocker 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:

If these are not correct, set them with:

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

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

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

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

Other than disabling the Prometheus Metrics from the Admin page, the recommendedsolution to fix this problem is to increase the size of shm to at least 256Mb.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 thispurpose.

Help & feedback

Get Help

If you didn't find what you were looking for,search the docs.

If you want help with something specific and could use community support,post on the GitLab forum.

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For problems setting up or using this feature (depending on your GitLabsubscription).

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