13.12.1ee -> 15.x upgrade?

I have an old server running 13.12.1 (although the gitlab-shell shows 13.18.0).

I found this in the version manifest.txt.

  1. Is there a command to display the current gitlab version?

  2. Is there a way to backup, or export, the database, remove the old gitlab, install the new gitlab (15), and import the database? Or do I need to follow the upgrade path?

I’m not that well versed in gitlab or linux but I’m trying.

Our server is used by 2 projects currently and we are using issues and wiki extensively.

thank you

I just tried an export and import for a project and it worked great going from 13.12.1ee to 13.12.1ee. I trust it will also work 13.12.1ee to 15.x ???

Is there a way to export and import users (the admin part of the database) ?

The current version is shown on <instance url>/help and <instance url>/admin (requires you to be an instance administrator, and possibly enter admin mode - possibly more work than using /help). If you don’t want to start a browser, the easiest is probably to ask your package manager - if you’re not well versed in linux, I hope you didn’t install from source), if it’s a Debian based distribution (I think the officially ones are: Debian or Ubuntu); it’s sudo dpkg -l gitlab-ee. A way to check from the CLI without asking your package manager is to start a rails console with sudo gitlab-rails console (but that takes longer than the other options), that will tell you, exit the console with ctrl+d, or by typing ‘exit’.

You can only restore to exactly the same version that a backup was made on, so you can’t use backup+restore in place of upgrading. But GitLab keeps data when you upgrade, so just read

and follow the recommended paths (that don’t talk about 15 yet, but going to the latest 14 (which is 14.10.3) first is probably a good idea.

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To determine the required versions in your upgrade path, you might find this tool that the GitLab Support team created helpful:

Is there a way to backup, or export, the database, remove the old gitlab, install the new gitlab (15), and import the database?

Is there a way to export and import users (the admin part of the database) ?

You can migrate all GitLab data from one server to another using GitLab Backup and Restore. This will migrate all GitLab data, but using this method backups can only be restored to the exact same version and type of GitLab. So if a backup was created on GitLab EE 13.12.1, you’d need to restore that to a GitLab EE instance running 13.12. Restoring to 15.x won’t work.

Or do I need to follow the upgrade path?

For best results and minimal risk of anything going awry, follow the upgrade path and check for background migrations (and always allow them to complete) before moving on to the next step in the path.

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