Have you ever wanted to host your own GitLab repositories to ensure your code never falls into the wrong hands? Although hosting your repositories on a third-party cloud host has many advantages (such as availability and reliability), there is something to be said for having full control over your repositories so that no one can access it without your approval.
With the help of Ubuntu Server 22.04 and Docker, you can do that. And I’ll show you how it’s done. It’s not too complicated, but there are a number of steps required. And so, without further ado, let’s get to work.
To accomplish this task, you will need a running instance of Ubuntu Server 22.04 and a user with sudo privileges. The Ubuntu instance can be hosted on your LAN, or even in your cloud-hosted account (although hosting it through a third-party type defeats the purpose of a self-hosted repository). Either way, you’re ready to do some magic.
Install dependencies
The first thing we are going to do is install the required dependencies. Connect to your Ubuntu instance and install the required software with the command:
sudo apt install ca-certificates curl openssh-server apt-transport-https gnupg lsb-release -y
Next, we need to install the community edition of Docker. For this, we will add the official Docker GPG key with:
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
Next, add the Docker repository:
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
Update apt with the command:
sudo apt-get update
Finally, install Docker Community Edition with:
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose -y
Add your user to the docker group with:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.
So far, so good. Let’s move on.
Change default SSH port
Since GitLab uses the default SSH port, you need to change the default SSH server port. Otherwise, there will be a conflict. Open the SSH configuration file with:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
In this file, find the line:
Replace this line with:
Enable port 22 to pass through the firewall with:
sudo ufw allow 2022
Be sure to test the SSH connection with another login using the command:
ssh USER@SERVER -p 2022
Where USER is your remote username and SERVER is the IP address or domain of the hosting server.
Create a new Docker volume
We are now ready to move on to the Docker side of things. The first thing we are going to do is create a new volume. First, create a directory to host the files with:
sudo mkdir -p /srv/gitlab
Next, create a directory that will host our Docker compose file with:
mkdir ~/docker-gitlab
Access this directory with:
cd ~/docker-gitlab
Create a file to house the environment variables with:
nano .env
Paste the following into this new file:
GITLAB_HOME=/srv/gitlab
Save and close the file.
Create the Docker Compose file
Create a new composition file with:
nano docker-compose.yml
In that file, paste the following (be sure to change anything in bold depending on your environment/needs):
version: ‘3.6’ services: web: image: ‘gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest’ container_name: ‘gitlab-server’ restart: always hostname: ‘gitlab.example.com‘ environment: GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: | external_url ‘https://DOMAIN_OR_IP‘gitlab_rails[‘smtp_enable’] = true gitlab_rails[‘smtp_address’] = “SMTP_SERVER” gitlab_rails[‘smtp_user_name’] = “SMTP_SERVER_USERNAME” gitlab_rails[‘smtp_password’] = “SMTP_SERVER_PASSWORD” gitlab_rails[‘smtp_domain’] = “DOMAIN” gitlab_rails[‘smtp_enable_starttls_auto’] = true gitlab_rails[‘smtp_port’] =587 gitlab_rails[‘smtp_authentication’] = “login” gitlab_rails[‘gitlab_email_from’] = ‘FROM_EMAIL‘gitlab_rails[‘gitlab_email_reply_to’] = ‘REPLY_EMAIL‘ # Add any other gitlab.rb configuration here, each on its own line ports: – ’80:80’ – ‘443:443′ – ’22:22’ – ‘587:587’ volumes: – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/ config:/etc/gitlab’ – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab’ – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab’ shm_size: ‘256m’
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version: ‘3.6’ services: the Web: image: ‘gitlab/gitlab-ee:last’ container_name: ‘gitlab-server’ to restart: still host name: ‘gitlab.example.com‘ environment: GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: | external_url ‘https://DOMAIN_OR_IP‘ gitlab_rails[‘smtp_enable’] = true gitlab_rails[‘smtp_address’] = “SMTP_SERVER“ gitlab_rails[‘smtp_user_name’] = “SMTP_SERVER_USERNAME“ gitlab_rails[‘smtp_password’] = “SMTP_SERVER_PASSWORD“ gitlab_rails[‘smtp_domain’] = “DOMAIN“ gitlab_rails[‘smtp_enable_starttls_auto’] = true gitlab_rails[‘smtp_port’] = 587 gitlab_rails[‘smtp_authentication’] = “connection” gitlab_rails[‘gitlab_email_from’] = ‘FROM_EMAIL‘ gitlab_rails[‘gitlab_email_reply_to’] = ‘REPLY_EMAIL‘ # Add any other gitlab.rb configuration here, each on its own line ports: – ’80:80′ – ‘443:443’ – ’22:22′ – ‘587:587’ volumes: – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab’ – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab’ – ‘$GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab’ shm_size: ‘256m’ |
Save and close the file.
Deploy container
We are now ready to deploy the container. To do this, issue the command:
docker-compose up -d
Deploying the container will take some time (between 10 and 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your network connection), so sit back and watch the output go by or take care of another task. Once the deployment is complete, you will need to access the automatically generated root password with the command:
sudo cat /srv/gitlab/config/initial_root_password
You should see a long string of random characters that will act as the root login password.
Access to GitLab
Open a web browser and point it to http://SERVER (where SERVER is your server’s IP address or domain). You will be greeted by the GitLab login screen (see Figure 1), where you will type the username root and paste the password you found in the initial_root_password file, as shown above. If the site doesn’t appear immediately, give it some time for the containers to finish deploying. Keep refreshing your web browser until the login screen appears.
Figure 1: The GitLab login screen is synonymous with success!
An alternative method of deployment
If you are having trouble with the above deployment, here is another method.
Configure the volume location with:
export GITLAB_HOME=/srv/gitlab
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export GITLAB_HOME=/please/gitlab |
Deploy the container with this (be sure to change everything in bold to suit your needs):
docker run –detach –hostname HOSTNAME –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: most recent
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docker Course —detach —host name b>HOST NAME/b> —publish 443:443 —publish 80:80 —publish 22:22 —Last name gitlab —to restart still —volume $GITLAB_HOME/configuration:/etc/gitlab —volume $GITLAB_HOME/newspapers:/var/Log/gitlab —volume $GITLAB_HOME/Data:/var/opt/gitlab —shm–Cut 256m gitlab/gitlab–ee:last |
One of the above methods should work to deploy GitLab. If you’re still having trouble, you can change the outward-facing SSH port to something like 10022, so this option would look like —post 10022:22.
Finally, if you’re still having trouble deploying GitLab, here’s another option:
docker run -d -p 22:22 -p 80:80 -p 443:443
--name gitlab --hostname gitlab.example.com
--restart unless-stopped --shm-size 256m
-v gitlab_config:/etc/gitlab -v gitlab_logs:/var/log/gitlab
-v gitlab_data:/var/opt/gitlab gitlab/gitlab-ce:14.7.0-ce.0
Congratulations! You now have a working GitLab repository that can be used in your local network.
The New Stack is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insight Partners, an investor in the following companies mentioned in this article: Enable, Docker.
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