did anybody know which Version from gitlab-ce will be the first official supportet for Debian trixie?
In my case, I did something stupid. Under the false assumption that the runners were already available for trixie, I thought that gitlab-ce package also existed for trixie.
After the dist-upgrade bookworm → trixie gitlab-ce 18.2.4-ce.0 (bookworm) is luckily up and running. I saw some Errors like this.
WARNING: database “gitlabhq_production” has a collation version mismatch DETAIL: The database was created using collation version 2.36, but the operating system provides version 2.41. HINT: Rebuild all objects in this database that use the default collation and run ALTER DATABASE gitlabhq_production REFRESH COLLATION VERSION, or build PostgreSQL with the right library version.
I think the newer version of the package
Package: libicu76 Version: 76.1-4
is causing the messages.
Today, I attempted to update to GitLab CE 18.3.0-ce.0 (bookworm) and received the following error messages during installation.
2025-08-22T10:02:51+02:00] INFO: Retrying execution of execute[create database registry], 11 attempts left [execute] WARNING: database “postgres” has a collation version mismatch DETAIL: The database was created using collation version 2.36, but the operating system provides version 2.41. HINT: Rebuild all objects in this database that use the default collation and run ALTER DATABASE postgres REFRESH COLLATION VERSION, or build PostgreSQL with the right library version. createdb: error: database creation failed: ERROR: template database “template1” has a collation version mismatch DETAIL: The template database was created using collation version 2.36, but the operating system provides version 2.41. HINT: Rebuild all objects in the template database that use the default collation and run ALTER DATABASE template1 REFRESH COLLATION VERSION, or build PostgreSQL with the right library version. [2025-08-22T10:02:53+02:00] INFO: Retrying execution of execute[create database registry], 10 attempts left
At the moment, I think the best idea is to wait for support from trixie. And then try my luck again.
btw. i did a downgrade to gitlab-ce 18.2.4-ce.0 (bookworm) and i was up and running again.
Above link has all the info on when it will be released. Until then, you just leave the gitlab list files with bookworm instead of trixie. That will still work, I even tested it myself on a test/dev machine. The above thread has a bit of convo on that topic.
:~# apt install gitlab-ce=18.2.4-ce.0 […] dpkg: Warnung: Paket gitlab-ce (18.3.0-ce.0) wird durch ältere Version (18.2.4-ce.0) ersetzt (Lese Datenbank … 164743 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.) Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von …/gitlab-ce_18.2.4-ce.0_amd64.deb … Malformed configuration JSON file found at /opt/gitlab/embedded/nodes/localhost.json. This usually happens when your last run of gitlab-ctl reconfigure didn’t complete successfully. This file is used to check if any of the unsupported configurations are enabled, and hence require a working reconfigure before upgrading. Please run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure to fix it and try again.
At that point i don’t do an gitlab-ctl reconfigure
WARNING: database “gitlabhq_production” has a collation version mismatch DETAIL: The database was created using collation version 2.36, but the operating system provides version 2.41. HINT: Rebuild all objects in this database that use the default collation and run ALTER DATABASE gitlabhq_production REFRESH COLLATION VERSION, or build PostgreSQL with the right library version.
And I decided to ignore them. The downgrade has been completed.
[…]
Upgrade complete! If your GitLab server is misbehaving try running sudo gitlab-ctl restart before anything else. If you need to roll back to the previous version you can use the database backup made during the upgrade (scroll up for the filename).
For whatever reason, it was not possible to connect to Gitlab after installation. However, it appeared to be running in the process list. I decided to reboot the entire system, after which everything functioned as usual again. And don’t forget to pin the gitlab-ce package until the triexie version is available.