One-Click GitLab

This article contains information about the GitLab application that can be deployed on Vultr.

Server Requirements

To launch a GitLab application on Vultr, a plan of at least 2GB RAM and 2 CPU cores is needed.

App Details

GitLab runs on the Ubuntu 16.04 operating system. It is the GitLab Community Edition (CE) flavor. You can log into this system with an SSH client using the root login found on your Vultr control panel. Installations prior to 06/21/2018 were built on the CentOS 6 operating system.

To access the GitLab application, navigate to https://[SERVER_IP]/ in your web browser. Substitute the [SERVER_IP] with the IP address of your VPS. It can take several minutes before this URL becomes accessible after launching the application. The SSL certificate warning can be safely ignored. This is explained in further detail below. Your GitLab login credentials are listed in the Vultr control panel.

SSL Warning

Your GitLab server can be accessed with either http:// or https:// URLs. Accessing with http:// will automatically redirect you to https://. By default, the https:// URL uses a self-signed certificate, which displays a security warning. This can be safely ignored.

Depending on your plans for your GitLab server, you may want to update the certificate to one provided by an actual certificate authority. This will remove the security warning error and allow you to clone repositories over HTTPS with Git. To install a new certificate, do the following:

1. Obtain a certificate from a certificate authority for your domain.
2. Login to your server using ssh as root.
3. Replace the [SERVER_IP].crt and [SERVER_IP].key files in /etc/gitlab/ssl/ with the updated certificate. Details on converting certificate formats are outside of the scope of this article.
4. Reconfigure the GitLab server: gitlab-ctl reconfigure

DNS Setup

If you plan on using a domain with your GitLab server, you will need to point the DNS "A record" to your [SERVER_IP]. This will allow you to access GitLab by navigating to your website (https://www.example.com). You must also switch the URL in the GitLab configuration. This will correct the "clone URLs" displayed within GitLab. Follow the steps below.

1. Login to your server using ssh as root.
2. Open the file /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and edit the line external_url https://[SERVER_IP] to external_url https://[YOUR_DOMAIN]
3. Reconfigure the GitLab server: gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Git Repositories

Your Git repositories created and managed by GitLab are located in /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories.

About Vultr Applications

Vultr applications use modern releases of software packages. Applications are configured to be deployed with specific versions of software. Over time, the Vultr team will update the application offerings to include newer operating systems, package versions, etc. This document only provides up-to-date information about the latest version of this application. Vultr applications are updated without notice. If you plan to build a project or infrastructure based on our application templates, we recommend taking a snapshot of the application used in your initial deployment.