Move omnibus install

How to Use GitLab
1

Hi Folks,

Im using gitlab ce 7.11.4 on a ubuntu 14.04 server with desktop on our VPN at the moment and would like to move it to another ubuntu 14.04 headless server on a subdomain, and add LDAP integration.

Linux and Ruby are very much not in my wheelhouse, so I’d like to be very prepared before I begin!

For the move:

So far I am going by http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/raketasks/backup_restore.html. Should I be looking at other documents as well?

But I note that https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/blob/master/README.md#configuration mentions backing up the configuration. Is this required separately to the backup_restore rake, or does that cover the configuration as well?

Are SSH details carried as well in a backup_restore?

** For the subdoman**
After the omnibus install on the new server, I just need to edit the URL settings in gitlab.rb right? Then run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure after?

For the LDAP

Is there a difference between


and
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/integration/ldap.md ??

How can I match current users (non-LDAP) to LDAP users? Maybe this will only be possible if they have the same email address.

Hopefully all will go well and I can report any info discovered in trial & error here as well.
Many thanks!
T

2

So I started off by updating to 7.12.1 as I noted that was released (including moving from manual download the apt-get install) and began following the instructions at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/blob/7.12.1.omnibus/README.md, though I do see that while this document has a Backup section it does not have a Restore section.

The backup & restore page linked to under the Upload backups to remote (cloud) starage section (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/966f68b33e1f15f08e383ec68346ed1bd690b59b/doc/raketasks/backup_restore.md#upload-backups-to-remote-cloud-storage) seems to be a somewhat older document, though the command seem as simple sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore there is very little other information… Are there any gotchas to know about with regard to restoring from a moved backup and configuration?

I cleared the backup directory in /var/opt/gitlab/backups and ran the backup command sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

I attempted to backup my configuration from /etc/gitlab as well, using the recommended command sudo sh -c 'umask 0077; tar -cf $(date "+etc-gitlab-%s.tar") -C / etc/gitlab' but this failed on two fronts. The first being that date returned invalid date probably due to me being on GMT + summer time. The second more annoying one, being that the command attempted to back up my entire / directory into a file called -C … not a great result as my machine then completely ran out of space!!

After some messing about I just cd'd to /etc switched to sudo shell (sudo sh) and used tar -cf etc-gitlab.tar ./gitlab

At this point the next thing to backup is my SSH keys I think. Is there any point in doing this if the install is moving to another domain? If there is, do I just wholesale copy and replace the entire /etc/ssh directory? (n00b at SSH details as well!). I have read the SE answer linked to in the documentation, but this only provides minimal information :\

T

3

I continued ahead, copied the tar archives of /etc/gitlab/, /etc/ssh/ and the backup from sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore to the new server on which I had a fresh install of 7.12.1 using the apt-get method (after sorting out some DNS crapola!)

I ran sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure first. Then extracted the /etc/gitlab/ backup and found that the newer version of gitlab.rb has a whole load more stuff in it, my older one only had the external_url so I just copied over that value (the URL and IP are staying the same). I wasn’t sure about gitlab-secrets.json, so I left it as it was without overwriting it.

Ran sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure again. Then copied the sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore backup to the /var/opt/gitlab/backups directory and ran sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore. There was a heart stopping moment where I saw it start printing out WARNINGs and REVOKE errors, but I let it run and seems appeared OK.

Ran sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure again. tried a login on the web interface to find login (with my old login deets) works fine. Yay!

Finally I extracted the /etc/ssh/ backup and copied all the ssh_host_* files from the backup to the new /etc/ssh/ directory, overwriting the files in there. It was important to check the permissions and ownership on these files where still as they had been on the old install. After this I ran sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure again one final time, just to be sure.

Then I tried a few git remote operations from my local command line, et voila! A working perfectly GitLab install :smiley:

The next planned move is to another server with external subdomain and adding LDAP… Hope that goes as easy!

T