Set up standalone PostgreSQL database

We’ll make use of the Linux package for Ubuntu. This package provides versions of the services that are guaranteed to be compatible with the charts’ services.

Create VM with the Linux package

Create a VM on your provider of choice, or locally. This was tested with VirtualBox, KVM, and Bhyve. Ensure that the instance is reachable from the cluster.

Install Ubuntu Server onto the VM that you have created. Ensure that openssh-server is installed, and that all packages are up to date. Configure networking and a hostname. Make note of the hostname/IP, and ensure it is both resolvable and reachable from your Kubernetes cluster. Be sure firewall policies are in place to allow traffic.

Follow the installation instructions for the Linux package. When you perform the package installation, do not provide the EXTERNAL_URL= value. We do not want automatic configuration to occur, as we’ll provide a very specific configuration in the next step.

Configure Linux package installation

Create a minimal gitlab.rb file to be placed at /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb. Be very explicit about what is enabled on this node, use the contents below.

Note: This example is not intended to provide PostgreSQL for scaling.

NOTE: The values below should be replaced

  • DB_USERNAME default username is gitlab
  • DB_PASSSWORD unencoded value
  • DB_ENCODED_PASSWORD encoded value of DB_PASSWORD. Can be generated by replacing DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD with real values in: echo -n 'DB_PASSSWORDDB_USERNAME' | md5sum - | cut -d' ' -f1
  • AUTH_CIDR_ADDRESS configure the CIDRs for MD5 authentication, should be the smallest possible subnets of your cluster or it’s gateway. For minikube, this value is 192.168.100.0/12 
# Change the address below if you do not want PG to listen on all available addresses
postgresql['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0'
# Set to approximately 1/4 of available RAM.
postgresql['shared_buffers'] = "512MB"
# This password is: `echo -n '${password}${username}' | md5sum - | cut -d' ' -f1`
# The default username is `gitlab`
postgresql['sql_user_password'] = "DB_ENCODED_PASSWORD"
# Configure the CIDRs for MD5 authentication
postgresql['md5_auth_cidr_addresses'] = ['AUTH_CIDR_ADDRESSES']
# Configure the CIDRs for trusted authentication (passwordless)
postgresql['trust_auth_cidr_addresses'] = ['127.0.0.1/24']

## Configure gitlab_rails
gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
gitlab_rails['db_username'] = "gitlab"
gitlab_rails['db_password'] = "DB_PASSSWORD"


## Disable everything else
sidekiq['enable'] = false
puma['enable'] = false
registry['enable'] = false
gitaly['enable'] = false
gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
nginx['enable'] = false
prometheus_monitoring['enable'] = false
redis['enable'] = false

After creating gitlab.rb, we’ll reconfigure the package with gitlab-ctl reconfigure. Once the task has completed, check the running processes with gitlab-ctl status. The output should appear as such: 

# gitlab-ctl status
run: logrotate: (pid 4856) 1859s; run: log: (pid 31262) 77460s
run: postgresql: (pid 30562) 77637s; run: log: (pid 30561) 77637s