Dockerized GitLab: How to Easily Set Up Your Own GitLab Server

GitLab official docker image on docker hub https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce

docker run -p 8000:80 gitlab/gitlab-ce

Wait a couple of mins and then visit http://localhost:8000

default user is root

Get root password?

docker ps --latest # copy GitLab container id from here
docker exec -it {CONTAINER_ID} cat /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password

Login and create a test repo

Stop GitLab container

docker stop {CONTAINER_ID}

Start GitLab container

docker start --attach {CONTAINER_ID}

Repo is there as it was before

What if i remove GitLab container at all

docker stop {CONTAINER_ID}
docker rm {CONTAINER_ID}

And create GitLab container again

docker run --port 8000:80 gitlab/gitlab-ce

What! repos are lost?

because we deleted container and everythig within that container is lost So how to retain GitLab data? First, lets see where GitLab keep its data and configs

docker exec -it {CONTAINER_ID} ls -l /etc/gitlab

This ^ keep password, secrets and other configurations

docker exec -it {CONTAINER_ID} ls -l /var/opt/gitlab

This keep actual GitLab data including redis and postgres

So we need to make these 2 dirs persistent from container into our host machine using docker volumes

Keep old password: 16Gf2RkJBRnIKJe4kHH++klHtR53X7f1WOpI5/FCrYQ= to be compared wih new password

Using volumes

docker run -p 8000:80 -v ./gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab -v ./gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab gitlab/gitlab-ce

./gitlab/config is a dir on my host machine inside my current folder /etc/gitlab is a dir inside container

Check ./gitlab dir in current folder for both configs and data

delete GitLab container and re-create. Everything should be there as it was

docker stop {CONTAINER_ID}
docker rm {CONTAINER_ID}
docker run -p 8000:80 -v ./gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab -v ./gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab gitlab/gitlab-ce

All these commands seems like too much manual commands running. How we can combine all these into a single file and a single command? Here comes docker compose. See here