• Updating GitLab installed with the Omnibus GitLab package
  • Version specific changes
  • Mandatory upgrade paths for version upgrades
  • Updating methods
    • Updating using the official repositories
    • Updating using a manually downloaded package
  • Updating Community Edition to Enterprise Edition
  • Zero downtime updates
    • Single deployment
    • Multi-node / HA deployment
    • Geo deployment
  • Downgrading
  • Updating GitLab CI from prior 5.4.0 to version 7.14 via Omnibus GitLab
  • Troubleshooting
    • Getting the status of a GitLab installation
    • RPM 'package is already installed' error

Updating GitLab installed with the Omnibus GitLab package

See the upgrade recommendations for suggestions on when to upgrade. If you are upgrading from a non-Omnibus installation to an Omnibus installation, check this guide.

Version specific changes

Updating to major versions might need some manual intervention. For more info, check the version your are updating to:

• GitLab 11
• GitLab 10
• GitLab 8
• GitLab 7
• GitLab 6

Mandatory upgrade paths for version upgrades

From version 10.8 onwards, upgrade paths are enforced for version upgrades by default. This restricts performing direct upgrades that skip major versions (for example 10.3 to 12.7 in one jump) which can result in breakage of the GitLab installations due to multiple reasons like deprecated or removed configuration settings, upgrade of internal tools and libraries etc. Users will have to follow the official upgrade recommendations while upgrading their GitLab instances.

Updating methods

There are two ways to update Omnibus GitLab:

• Using the official repositories
• Manually download the package

Updating using the official repositories

If you have installed Omnibus GitLab Community Edition or Enterprise Edition, then the official GitLab repository should have already been set up for you.

To update to a newer GitLab version, all you have to do is:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce

# Centos/RHEL
sudo yum install gitlab-ce

If you are an Enterprise Edition user, replace gitlab-ce with gitlab-ee in the above commands.

Updating using a manually downloaded package

If for some reason you don't use the official repositories, it is possible to download the package and install it manually.

1. Visit the Community Edition repository or the Enterprise Edition repository depending on the edition you already have installed.
2. Find the package version you wish to install and click on it.
3. Click the 'Download' button in the upper right corner to download the package.

4. Once the GitLab package is downloaded, install it using the following commands, replacing XXX with the Omnibus GitLab version you downloaded:

   # Debian/Ubuntu
   dpkg -i gitlab-ce-XXX.deb
   
   # CentOS/RHEL
   rpm -Uvh gitlab-ce-XXX.rpm
   

   If you are an Enterprise Edition user, replace gitlab-ce with gitlab-ee in the above commands.

Updating Community Edition to Enterprise Edition

To upgrade an existing GitLab Community Edition (CE) server, installed using the Omnibus packages, to GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE), all you have to do is install the EE package on top of CE. While upgrading from the same version of CE to EE is not explicitly necessary, and any standard upgrade jump (i.e. 8.0 to 8.7) should work, in the following steps we assume that you are upgrading the same versions.

The steps can be summed up to:

1. Find the currently installed GitLab version:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   sudo apt-cache policy gitlab-ce | grep Installed
   

   The output should be similar to: Installed: 8.6.7-ce.0. In that case, the equivalent Enterprise Edition version will be: 8.6.7-ee.0. Write this value down.

   ---

   For CentOS/RHEL

   sudo rpm -q gitlab-ce
   

   The output should be similar to: gitlab-ce-8.6.7-ce.0.el7.x86_64. In that case, the equivalent Enterprise Edition version will be: gitlab-ee-8.6.7-ee.0.el7.x86_64. Write this value down.

2. Add the gitlab-ee Apt or Yum repository:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

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

   For CentOS/RHEL

   curl -s https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ee/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash
   

   ---

   The above command will find your OS version and automatically set up the repository. If you are not comfortable installing the repository through a piped script, you can first check its contents.

3. Next, install the gitlab-ee package. Note that this will automatically uninstall the gitlab-ce package on your GitLab server. Reconfigure Omnibus right after the gitlab-ee package is installed. Make sure that you install the exact same GitLab version:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   ## Make sure the repositories are up-to-date
   sudo apt-get update
   
   ## Install the package using the version you wrote down from step 1
   sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee=8.6.7-ee.0
   
   ## Reconfigure GitLab
   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

   For CentOS/RHEL

   ## Install the package using the version you wrote down from step 1
   sudo yum install gitlab-ee-8.6.7-ee.0.el7.x86_64
   
   ## Reconfigure GitLab
   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

   Note: If you want to upgrade to EE and at the same time also update GitLab to the latest version, you can omit the version check in the above commands. For Debian/Ubuntu that would be sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee and for CentOS/RHEL sudo yum install gitlab-ee.

4. Now go to the GitLab admin panel of your server (/admin/license/new) and upload your license file.

5. After you confirm that GitLab is working as expected, you may remove the old Community Edition repository:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.list
   

   ---

   For CentOS/RHEL

   sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.repo
   

That's it! You can now use GitLab Enterprise Edition! To update to a newer version follow the section on Updating using the official repositories.

Zero downtime updates

It's possible to upgrade to a newer version of GitLab without having to take your GitLab instance offline. This can only be done if you are using PostgreSQL. If you are using MySQL you will still need downtime when upgrading.

Verify that you can upgrade with no downtime by checking the Upgrading without downtime section of the update document.

If you meet all the requirements above, follow these instructions in order. There are three sets of steps, depending on your deployment type:

Single deployment

1. Create an empty file at /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure. During software installation only, this will prevent the upgrade from running gitlab-ctl reconfigure and automatically running database migrations

   sudo touch /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure
   

2. Update the GitLab package

   # Debian/Ubuntu
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce
   
   # Centos/RHEL
   sudo yum install gitlab-ce
   

   If you are an Enterprise Edition user, replace gitlab-ce with gitlab-ee in the above command.

3. To get the regular migrations in place, run

   SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

4. Once the node is updated and reconfigure finished successfully, complete the migrations with

   sudo gitlab-rake db:migrate
   

5. Hot reload unicorn and sidekiq services

   sudo gitlab-ctl hup unicorn
   sudo gitlab-ctl hup sidekiq
   

Multi-node / HA deployment

Pick a node to be the Deploy Node. It can be any node, but it must be the same node throughout the process.

Deploy node

• Create an empty file at /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure. During software installation only, this will prevent the upgrade from running gitlab-ctl reconfigure and automatically running database migrations

  sudo touch /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure
  

All other nodes (not the Deploy node)

• Ensure that gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false is set in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

Deploy node

• Update the GitLab package

  # Debian/Ubuntu
  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce
  
  # Centos/RHEL
  sudo yum install gitlab-ce
  

  If you are an Enterprise Edition user, replace gitlab-ce with gitlab-ee in the above command.

• To get the regular database migrations in place, run

  SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
  

All other nodes (not the Deploy node)

• Update the GitLab package

  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce
  

  If you are an Enterprise Edition user, replace gitlab-ce with gitlab-ee in the above command.

• Ensure nodes are running the latest code

  sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
  

Deploy node

• Once all nodes are updated, run the following to run post-deployment database migrations

  sudo gitlab-rake db:migrate
  

For nodes that run unicorn or sidekiq

• Hot reload unicorn and sidekiq services

  sudo gitlab-ctl hup unicorn
  sudo gitlab-ctl hup sidekiq
  

Geo deployment

Primary node

On the Primary node, executing the following:

1. Ensure that gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false is set in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

2. Create an empty file at /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure. During software installation only, this will prevent the upgrade from running gitlab-ctl reconfigure and automatically running database migrations

   sudo touch /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure
   

3. Update the GitLab package

   # Debian/Ubuntu
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee
   
   # Centos/RHEL
   sudo yum install gitlab-ee
   

4. To get the database migrations in place, run

   SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

5. Run non post-deployment database migrations

   SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true sudo gitlab-rake db:migrate
   

6. Run post-deployment database migrations

   sudo gitlab-rake db:migrate
   

7. Hot reload unicorn and sidekiq services

   sudo gitlab-ctl hup unicorn
   sudo gitlab-ctl hup sidekiq
   

8. Verify Geo configuration and dependencies

   sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:geo:check
   

Secondary node(s)

On all Secondary nodes, executing the following:

1. Ensure that geo_secondary['auto_migrate'] = false is set in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

2. Create an empty file at /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure. During software installation only, this will prevent the upgrade from running gitlab-ctl reconfigure and automatically running database migrations

   sudo touch /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure
   

3. Update the GitLab package

   # Debian/Ubuntu
   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee
   
   # Centos/RHEL
   sudo yum install gitlab-ee
   

4. To get the database migrations in place, run

   SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

5. Run post-deployment database migrations, specific to the Geo database

   sudo gitlab-rake geo:db:migrate
   

6. Hot reload unicorn, sidekiq and restart geo-logcursor services

   sudo gitlab-ctl hup unicorn
   sudo gitlab-ctl hup sidekiq
   sudo gitlab-ctl restart geo-logcursor
   

7. Verify Geo configuration and dependencies

   sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:geo:check
   

8. Verify Geo status

   sudo gitlab-rake geo:status
   

Downgrading

This section contains general information on how to revert to an earlier version of a package.

These steps consist of:

• Download the package of a target version.(example below uses GitLab 6.x.x)
• Stop GitLab
• Install the old package
• Reconfigure GitLab
• Restoring the backup
• Starting GitLab

See example below:

First download a GitLab 6.x.x CE or EE (subscribers only) package.

Steps:

1. Stop GitLab:

   sudo gitlab-ctl stop unicorn
   sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq
   

2. Downgrade GitLab to 6.x:

   # Ubuntu
   sudo dpkg -r gitlab
   sudo dpkg -i gitlab-6.x.x-yyy.deb
   
   # CentOS:
   sudo rpm -e gitlab
   sudo rpm -ivh gitlab-6.x.x-yyy.rpm
   

3. Prepare GitLab for receiving the backup restore. Due to a backup restore bug in versions earlier than GitLab 6.8.0, it is needed to drop the database before running gitlab-ctl reconfigure, only if you are downgrading to 6.7.x or less:

   sudo -u gitlab-psql /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/dropdb gitlabhq_production
   

4. Reconfigure GitLab (includes database migrations):

   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

5. Restore your backup:

   sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore BACKUP=12345 # where 12345 is your backup timestamp
   

6. Start GitLab:

   sudo gitlab-ctl start
   

Updating GitLab CI from prior 5.4.0 to version 7.14 via Omnibus GitLab

In GitLab CI 5.4.0 we changed the way GitLab CI authorizes with GitLab.

In order to use GitLab CI 5.4.x, GitLab 7.7.x is required.

Make sure that GitLab 7.7.x is installed and running and then go to Admin section of GitLab. Under Applications create a new a application which will generate the app_id and app_secret.

In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

gitlab_ci['gitlab_server'] = { "url" => 'http://gitlab.example.com', "app_id" => '12345678', "app_secret" => 'QWERTY12345' }

Where url is the url to the GitLab instance.

Make sure to run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure after saving the configuration.

Troubleshooting

Getting the status of a GitLab installation

sudo gitlab-ctl status
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check SANITIZE=true

• Information on using gitlab-ctl to perform maintenance tasks.
• Information on using gitlab-rake to check the configuration.

RPM 'package is already installed' error

If you are using RPM and you are upgrading from GitLab Community Edition to GitLab Enterprise Edition you may get an error like this:

package gitlab-7.5.2_omnibus.5.2.1.ci-1.el7.x86_64 (which is newer than gitlab-7.5.2_ee.omnibus.5.2.1.ci-1.el7.x86_64) is already installed

You can override this version check with the --oldpackage option:

sudo rpm -Uvh --oldpackage gitlab-7.5.2_ee.omnibus.5.2.1.ci-1.el7.x86_64.rpm