Digital Ocean and Docker Machine test environment

Caution: This guide is for quickly testing different versions of GitLab and not recommended for ease of future upgrades or keeping the data you create.

Initial setup

In this guide you’ll configure a Digital Ocean droplet and set up Docker locally on either macOS or Linux.

On macOS

Install Docker Toolbox

On Linux

Install Docker Engine

Install Docker Machine

Note: The rest of the steps are identical for macOS and Linux.

Create new docker host

  1. Login to Digital Ocean.

  2. Generate a new API token at https://cloud.digitalocean.com/settings/api/tokens.

    This command will create a new DO droplet called gitlab-test-env-do that will act as a docker host.

    Note: 4GB is the minimum requirement for a Docker host that will run more than one GitLab instance.
    • RAM: 4GB
    • Name: gitlab-test-env-do
    • Driver: digitalocean

  3. Set the DO token: 

     export DOTOKEN=<your generated token>

  4. Create the machine: 

     docker-machine create \
   --driver digitalocean \
   --digitalocean-access-token=$DOTOKEN \
   --digitalocean-size "4gb" \
     gitlab-test-env-do

Resource: https://docs.docker.com/machine/drivers/digital-ocean/.

Creating GitLab test instance

Connect your shell to the new machine

In this example we’ll create a GitLab EE 8.10.8 instance.

First connect the docker client to the docker host you created previously. 

eval "$(docker-machine env gitlab-test-env-do)"

You can add this to your ~/.bash_profile file to ensure the docker client uses the gitlab-test-env-do docker host

Create new GitLab container

  • HTTP port: 8888
  • SSH port: 2222
    • Set gitlab_shell_ssh_port using --env GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG
  • Hostname: IP of docker host
  • Container name: gitlab-test-8.10
  • GitLab version: EE 8.10.8-ee.0
Set up container settings 
export SSH_PORT=2222
export HTTP_PORT=8888
export VERSION=8.10.8-ee.0
export NAME=gitlab-test-8.10
Create container 
docker run --detach \
--env GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG="external_url 'http://$(docker-machine ip gitlab-test-env-do):$HTTP_PORT'; gitlab_rails['gitlab_shell_ssh_port'] = $SSH_PORT;" \
--hostname $(docker-machine ip gitlab-test-env-do) \
-p $HTTP_PORT:$HTTP_PORT -p $SSH_PORT:22 \
--name $NAME \
gitlab/gitlab-ee:$VERSION

Connect to the GitLab container

Retrieve the docker host IP 
docker-machine ip gitlab-test-env-do
# example output: 192.168.151.134

Browse to: http://192.168.151.134:8888/.

Execute interactive shell/edit configuration 
docker exec -it $NAME /bin/bash

# example commands
root@192:/# vi /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
root@192:/# gitlab-ctl reconfigure

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