How to Install and Configure GitLab in Debian 10

Gitlab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle management tool developed by GitLab Inc. Similar to the Github, Gitlab is also another popular Git version control system used by large number of users. Gitlab also provides great features like issue tracking, To-Do list, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for the applications. Gitlab also supports integration with various services.

The Community edition of Gitlab is available free for use on development and production environment. It provides large number of features required for small to large scale companies. The enterprise edition provides more features but required a paid license.

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This tutorial will describe you to how to install Gitlab on Debian 10 Buster Linux system. You are going to install Gitlab community edition using this tutorial.

Prerequisites

A running Debian 10 system with with a sudo privileged account .

Open a shell on your server and upgrade the current packages to the latest version.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade 

Also, install some required packages for installing Gitlab on Debian systems.

sudo apt install -y vim curl ca-certificates apt-transport-https 

Step 1 – Installing Gitlab in Debian

The Gitlab official team provides a shell script to configure Apt repository on your system. As well as install some required dependencies to your system.

Open a terminal and execute following command:

curl -s https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ce/script.deb.sh | sudo bash 

The above command will create apt configuration file (/etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.list) in your system. Next is to install Gitlab on Debian system using Apt command. Make sure to change EXTERNAL_URL with the domain name you want to access Gitlab.

sudo EXTERNAL_URL="http://gitlab.tecadmin.net" apt install gitlab-ce 

Press ‘y’ for any confirmation prompted by the installer.

Wait for a few minutes to complete the installation process. The installer will install and configure all the required services like Nginx, Redis, Gitlab and many more.

Step 2 – Configure Gitlab

Edit the Gitlab configuration file /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and update the external_url to a valid domain or subdomain name to use for accessing Gitlab.

sudo vim /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb 

external_url "https://gitlab.tecadmin.net"

The Gitlab also provide native support for configuring let’s encrypt SSL certificates. To enable the let’s encrypt SSL, edit the following values in configuration file.

# Enable the Let's encrypt SSL
letsencrypt['enable'] = true

# This is optional to get SSL related alerts
letsencrypt['contact_emails'] = ['[email protected]']

# This example renews every 7th day at 02:00 AM
letsencrypt['auto_renew_hour'] = "2"
letsencrypt['auto_renew_minute'] = "0"
letsencrypt['auto_renew_day_of_month'] = "*/7"

Save the configuration file. The vim editor user use ESC + :wq to save and exit file. The nano user can use shotcut CTRL + o to save content and then CTRL + x to exit from editor.

Now, run the reconfigure command to apply changes to Gitlab server.

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure 

This will take some time to complete the installation. At the end, you will see a message “gitlab Reconfigured!” on your screen.

Once the Gitlab reconfigured, verify the service status

sudo gitlab-ctl status

Make sure all the services are in running condition. In case of facing any issue with services use sudo gitlab-ctl restart command to restart all services.

Step 3 – Adjust Firewall

If you system running a firewall, make sure to open 80, 443 ports.

The firewalld users can use the following commands to open required ports on their system.

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http  
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https 

Next, run the following command to implement the changes:

sudo firewall-cmd --reload 

Step 4 – Access Gitlab Dashboard

Access the Gitlab dashboard using domain name configured in Gitlab configuration file. Open a web browser and access your domain:

https://gitlab.tecadmin.net

During the first time, Gitlab will prompt you to set a new password for the default user. The Gitlab default username is “root”, have the administrator privileges. Set a strong password for this account.

After changing the password, your browser redirects to login page. Here use “root” as username and password, you set in above to login as administrator.

Hit Sign in button to login Gitlab administrator dashboard.

That’s it. The Gitlab server has been successfully install and configured on a Debian 10 Linux system. After login to the Gitlab administrator dashboard, create user account, groups and repositories for your code to be managed under Git version control system.

Step 5 – Configure Backups

Use the following command to take complete backup of your data. The default backup created under the /var/opt/gitlab/backups directory, which an be change in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file.

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create 

You can also add the same command scheduler to backup data nightly. Add the below job to the system crontab.

0   22  *  *  *   sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

Conclusion

This tutorial helped you to install and configure Gitlab on Debian 10 system. Also enabled the backup on daily basis.