I am attempting to install GitLab on Qubes but I’m having a hard time figuring out the proper way (or even the improper way) to do it.
Qubes works by running applications in isolated virtual machines (AppVMs) that inherit their filesystem from a template virtual machine (TemplateVM.) The only paths on the AppVMs that have persistence through reboots are /usr/local/ and /home/.
So my issue is that I need any files/folders that are created/modified by GitLab during normal operation to be configured to either of those directories.
I tried making a folder owned by the user “git” in the home folder and specifying it in “git_data_dirs” in the gitlab.rb configuration file. This allowed me to access GitLab normally and make a repository, but the repository disappears when I reboot the AppVM. The files for the repository are still in the specified git_data_dirs directory but they don’t seem to be loaded by GitLab so I’m guessing there’s some other file that determines which repositories have been created or need to be loaded.
I’m not sure if setting GitLab up in this environment is feasible. If it’s too much difficulty, I’ll just have to create a standalone VM that has its own filesystem for GitLab. I’m mainly posting this in the hope that maybe there is just another file or directory that I need to remap to the persistent directory to fix things. This is pretty far outside my range of knowledge so I greatly appreciate any help on the issue. Thanks.