Gitlab on Docker

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Gitlab on Docker

Why

Normally we would not think of hosting a gitlab on local. But we might need one when
- we wish to develop/test our CI-CD pipeline
- try out a new feature
- establish a CI - CD for hobby projects

Which Gitlab

Gitlab docker images are available in two flavours
- Community Edition
- Enterprise Edition

Enterprise edition needs a license. Without license, it acts as community edition. And as usually is the case - enterprise edition comes with more propriety features. 

To switch between which image we wish to use - just change the suffix
- gitlab-ce
- gitlab-ee

Limitation of this approach

  • CI / CD is unavailable (For CI/CD refer this)
  • Gitlab docker image is a monolith - it contains all the applications it needs in one image. So image is huge - 2.23 GB for me.

Gitlab doesn't work alone for CI-CD. It needs a runner - a helper service. We shall talk about it a little later. If you only use gitlab, you get

  • git
  • ability to have merge requests 

Command

Create a folder: gitlab. And create 3 folders inside gitlab. These will be used to persist gitlab data between container restarts.

docker run --detach \
  --hostname localhost:8180 \
  --publish 8143:443 --publish 8180:8180 --publish 8122:22 \
  --name gitlab \
  --restart always \
  --volume /Users/hsingh/docker/data/gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab \
  --volume /tmp/docker/data/gitlab/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
  --volume /Users/hsingh/docker/data/gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
  gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest

Command takes some time to run - gitlab is SLOW.

You can view logs as
  docker logs -f gitlab

Note:
  • When you see logs starting with a '*', it means gitlab is still starting up. When you start seeing normal logs, it means gitlab has started.
  • --hostname : gitlab uses hostname to internally build URLs. It is important.
  • The port used inside the container depends on port you gave in --hostname. So make sure that you map the docker inside port to the one you have in --hostname. That is why I mapped 8180:8180 instead of 8180:80 as given in https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/docker/ link.
  • logs get filled up at a fast pace. So when gitlab stops responding, stop it. Delete all logs. Start it.
  • logs getting filled up is the reason I have given /tmp/docker/data/gitlab as logs volume. 
I am using CE edititon. To use EE edition, simply change image name to gitlab/gitlab-ee:latest

Navigate gitlab

Open this URL: http://localhost:8180 (or any port you might have exposed). This takes to a page where you are asked to set your admin password.

Now login with username "root" and password what you set in step above.

Now this works as a normal gitlab.

A few things to note

You can clone repo using https. To clone using "git@...", you need to do following 

1. Add SSH key to your user in gitlab
2. Make this entry in ~/.ssh/config

  Host localhost
    Hostname localhost
    Port 8122
    User root
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Now clone using "git@" works.

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