Set Up GITLAB Server and host your own Git repositories

GitLab is fairly easy to install and incredibly simple to use. GitLab allows you to host an on-premise Git repository that can be accessed from either your local LAN or (if you have an available public IP address) from outside your company.

There are two ways to install GitLab Server
a). On Containers Environment (Docker)
b). On Host Machine (Bare Metal Servers)

Let’s Strat Installation
A) On Container Environment:
Run it with single docker command:

docker run -d --name git-server -v /srv/gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab -v /srv/gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab -p 80:80 -p 443:443 gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest

Run it with docker-compose.yaml file:

web:
  image: 'gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest'
  restart: always
  hostname: 'git'
  environment:
    GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
      external_url 'https://mygit.abc.in'
     #nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true
     #nginx['ssl_certificate'] = '/etc/gitlab/ssl/cert.pem'
     #nginx['ssl_certificate_key'] ='/etc/gitlab/ssl/privatekey.pem'
  ports:
    - '80:80'
   #- '443:443'
  volumes:
    - '/srv/gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab'
    - '/srv/gitlab/logs:/var/log/gitlab'
    - '/srv/gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab'
   #- '/etc/gitlab/ssl:/etc/gitlab/ssl'

Note: If you have SSL certificate then you can uncommnet all commented (#) lines in above docker-compose file and run it with following commands
$docker-compose up -d
And for check logs:
$docker-compose logs -f web
It will take time to statru up all the services up and running. Please keep patience for 4–5 minutes.

B) On Host Machine (Bare Metal Servers):

I’m going to walk you through the process of installing GitLab on Ubuntu Server 16.04. I will assume you already have Ubuntu Server up and running, and have access to an account with sudo rights.
Let’s install.

Installation:
In order to install GitLab, you will need a server with at least two cores and 4GB of RAM. If you’re running this on a virtual machine, make sure the VM exceeds those resources.
Open up a terminal window on the server and issue the commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Once those commands run, you are ready to install GitLab (assuming you don’t have to reboot the server).
The first thing that must be installed is the necessary dependencies. This can be handled with the following command:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl openssh-server postfix

During the above installation, you will be asked how to configure Postfix. Select Internet site, and then enter either the domain or the IP address of the server. If you’re users are familiar with Linux, you could always select a local-only Postfix configuration, knowing that all users would have to use the mail command on the server to check to see if they have any mail delivered by GitLab. If you do go that route, you’ll need to install the mailutils package, like so:

sudo apt install mailutils

With the dependencies ready, we must install the necessary repository with the following commands:

curl -LO https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ce/script.deb.sh
cd /tmp
sudo bash /tmp/script.deb.sh

Finally, install GitLab with the command:

sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce

Configuring GitLab

There is only one file to edit for configuration. Open the file for editing with the command sudo nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb. Within that file, you’re looking for the following line:

external_url 'https://yourdomain'

Modify that to reflect either your server domain or IP address. If you’re using an IP address, make sure to drop the https in favor of http.

If you configure GitLab to use a domain, you’ll have to enable SSL. To do that, locate the following two lines (around line 1519):

# letsencrypt['enable'] = false
# letsencrypt['contact_emails'] = [ ]

Uncomment those lines (remove the #) and then change false to true and enter a valid email address inside the empty [ ] characters.

Save and close that file. Reconfigure GitLab with the command:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Once the reconfiguration happens, open a browser and point it to either https://DOMAIN or http://IP (Where DOMAIN is the domain of the server or IP is the IP address of the server). You will be prompted to change the administrator account password (Figure A).

FIGURE A.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be presented with the login screen, where you can register for an account. Create an account, log in, and you are ready to start using GitLab. Create groups, projects, and more.

Adding ssh keys

In order to push or pull to your projects, you must add remote machine account ssh-keys to your new GitLab account. To do this, find the ssh pubkey on the remote machine — on Linux you can do this by issuing the command cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and copying the output. Back on your GitLab account, click the Profile drop-down in the upper right corner and click Settings. In the Settings window, click SSH Keys (Figure B).

FIGURE B

Copy the contents of the SSH pubkey in the Key section, give the key a title, and click Add key. With the public key added, you should now be able to push and pull changes to the GitLab server.

ENJOY.