How to Setup GitLab

Quick summary

This tutorial walks you through installing GitLab from the official package repository on a Linux machine, including configuring the external URL and running gitlab-ctl reconfigure to get your self-hosted instance ready to use. By the end, you can log in to GitLab using the auto-generated root password in an offline or air-gapped environment.

Steps

1. Go to the GitLab package repository to find the version you want to install.
2. Choose the package that is compatible with your machine architecture.
3. Scroll to the upper-right corner of the page and click Download to get the package file.
4. Run sudo dpkg -i gitlab-ce_<version>_amd64.deb in your terminal, replacing <version> with your downloaded package version, to install GitLab CE.
5. Wait for the installation process to complete.
6. Open the GitLab configuration file by running sudo vim /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb.
7. Set the external URL in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, then run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure to apply your changes.
8. Run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure again to fully apply all configuration changes and restart GitLab services.
9. Once reconfiguration is complete, copy the generated password from the terminal output — you will need it to log in to your GitLab instance.
10. Log in to your GitLab offline environment using root as the username and the password you copied from the output.