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Setup your private GitLab server with Docker (and Rancher)

·3 mins

In this blog post, I will cover my Docker environment and the configuration of the Docker containers.

Environment

At home, I did build a powerful NAS machine for all my home projects, storage, backups, etc. I didn't want to install all applications on the machine "the bare-metal way" so I installed Docker and Rancher on it. With Rancher, I can swap applications in and out easily by starting and stopping Docker containers. You can find more about Rancher on their website http://rancher.com/.

GitLab in Docker containers

There are multiple ways to use GitLab in Docker containers:

  1. Using the GitLab omnibus packages (the official GitLab Docker container)
  2. Using third-party configurations like the configuration of Sameer Naik: https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab

Official GitLab Docker container

I will be really short about this container: just don't use it. It is really unstable, not configurable at all, and I couldn't get it working at all :-( ...

Sameer Naik's GitLab Docker configuration

After some googling, I ran into the docker-compose file of Sameer Naik's GitLab Docker configuration. The documentation is extremely comprehensive, which is a good sign. The GitHub repository is still maintained so I gave it a shot.

I copy-pasted the docker-compose file but, unfortunately, Rancher didn't accept the version 2 docker-compose file. So I had to create my own docker-compose and rancher-compose file. I'm happy I did because there is really a lot to configure!

I came up with the following docker-compose file:

gitlab-ce-postgresql:
  environment:
    DB_USER: gitlab
    DB_PASS: pass
    DB_NAME: gitlabhq_production
    DB_EXTENSION: pg_trgm
  labels:
    io.rancher.container.pull_image: always
  tty: true
  image: sameersbn/postgresql:9.6-2
  volumes:
  - /poolz2/volumes/gitlab/postgresql:/var/lib/postgresql:Z
  stdin_open: true
gitlab-ce-redis:
  labels:
    io.rancher.container.pull_image: always
  tty: true
  image: sameersbn/redis:latest
  volumes:
  - /poolz2/volumes/gitlab/redis:/var/lib/redis:Z
  stdin_open: true
gitlab-ce-gitlab:
  ports:
  - dedicated-ip-for-gitlab:80:80/tcp
  - dedicated-ip-for-gitlab:443:443/tcp
  - dedicated-ip-for-gitlab:22:22/tcp
  environment:
    DEBUG: 'false'
    DB_ADAPTER: postgresql
    DB_HOST: postgresql
    DB_PORT: '5432'
    DB_USER: gitlab
    DB_PASS: pass
    DB_NAME: gitlabhq_production
    REDIS_HOST: redis
    REDIS_PORT: '6379'
    TZ: Europe/Amsterdam
    GITLAB_TIMEZONE: Europe/Amsterdam
    GITLAB_HTTPS: 'false'
    SSL_SELF_SIGNED: 'false'
    GITLAB_HOST: gitlab.mapi.local
    GITLAB_SECRETS_DB_KEY_BASE: key
    GITLAB_SECRETS_SECRET_KEY_BASE: key
    GITLAB_SECRETS_OTP_KEY_BASE: key
    GITLAB_EMAIL: gitlab@gitlab.mapi.local
    GITLAB_EMAIL_REPLY_TO: gitlab@pimwiddershoven.nl
    GITLAB_BACKUP_SCHEDULE: daily
    GITLAB_BACKUP_TIME: 01:00
    SMTP_ENABLED: 'true'
    SMTP_DOMAIN: pimwiddershoven.nl
    SMTP_HOST: pimwiddershoven.nl
    SMTP_PORT: '587'
    SMTP_USER: user
    SMTP_PASS: pass
    IMAP_ENABLED: 'false'
    IMAP_HOST: pimwiddershoven.nl
    IMAP_PORT: '993'
    IMAP_USER: user
    IMAP_PASS: pass
  labels:
    io.rancher.container.pull_image: always
  tty: true
  image: sameersbn/gitlab:8.16.5
  links:
  - gitlab-ce-redis:redis
  - gitlab-ce-postgresql:postgresql
  volumes:
  - /poolz2/volumes/gitlab/gitlab:/home/git/data:Z
  stdin_open: true

For completeness I will also show you the rancher-compose file:

gitlab-ce-postgresql:
  scale: 1
gitlab-ce-redis:
  scale: 1
gitlab-ce-gitlab:
  scale: 1

After booting up the "Stack" and waiting till the database migration was finished, I had a working GitLab environment on my internal domain gitlab.mapi.local.

With above configuration, I had set up my own private GitLab environment in approx. 15 minutes and I was ready to move my GitHub home project to GitLab.