Install and Configure GitLab CE on Debian 11/10

This guide will walk you through the steps to Install GitLab CE on Debian 11|Debian 10. GitLab Community Edition (CE) is an open-source application for hosting Git repositories in your own infrastructure. With GitLab you can do project planning and source code management to CI/CD and monitoring. GitLab has evolved to become a complete DevOps platform, delivered as a single application.

The next sections will cover the steps to be followed to have a running GitLab CE on Debian 11|Debian 10 Linux machine. Debian 11 is currently available for general use and we’ve chosen it to host our GitLab service.

In my setup I’ll use a server with the following specs:

8GB of Ram
4 vcpus
40GB Disk space
Domain name: git.computingpost.com

See output shared below.

$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          7.8Gi        74Mi       7.6Gi       9.0Mi       101Mi       7.5Gi
Swap:         4.0Gi          0B       4.0Gi

$ grep -c  ^processor /proc/cpuinfo 
4

$ df -hT /
Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1      ext4   40G  963M   37G   3% /

So let’s start installation of GitLab CE on Debian 11|Debian 10 system.

Step 1: Update Debian server

For newly installed Debian server, update all packages and upgrade any system packages to the latest release.

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y upgrade 
sudo reboot

Step 2: Install GitLab Dependencies on Debian 11|Debian 10

Once the server has been updated and rebooted, install important software packages for GitLab. All the packages are installed from default package repositories.

sudo apt -y install curl vim openssh-server ca-certificates

Step 3: Configure Postfix Send-Only SMTP Server

GitLab should be able to send emails to you on Git activities. Configure Postfix SMTP Server using the guide below:

Install and Configure Postfix as a Send-Only SMTP Server on Debian

Other email solutions can be used as discussed in detail on configure an external SMTP server.

Step 4: Add the GitLab CE Repository

With the dependency packages installed, let’s add GitLab repository to our Debian 10 server.

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

If this is successful, a positive message should be displayed.

Running apt-get update... done.
Installing debian-archive-keyring which is needed for installing 
apt-transport-https on many Debian systems.
Installing apt-transport-https... done.
Installing /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.list...done.
Importing packagecloud gpg key... done.
Running apt-get update... done.

The repository is setup! You can now install packages.

Step 5: Install GitLab CE on Debian 11|Debian 10

Next, install the GitLab package while changing https://gitlab.example.com to the URL at which you want to access your GitLab instance.

export GITLAB_URL="http://git.computingpost.com"
sudo EXTERNAL_URL="$GITLAB_URL" apt install gitlab-ce

If your server has a public IP and access to the internet, you can use https and Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.

export GITLAB_URL="https://git.example.com"
sudo EXTERNAL_URL="$GITLAB_URL" apt install gitlab-ce

The installation will automatically configure and start GitLab at the URL provided.

Whenever you change GitLab configurations on /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, reconfigure the application by running the following command.

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Step 6: Access GitLab CE Web Interface

Once the installation of GitLab CE on Debian 11|Debian 10 is done, open the URL http://gitlab.example.com on your browser to finish the installation of GitLab CE.

On your first visit, you’ll be redirected to a password reset screen. Provide the password for the initial administrator account and click on the Change your password button when you are finished.