Installation guide for GitLab 10.1.0 on OS X 10.11.6

Overview

This is an unofficial community-made guide for installing GitLab CE on OS X, based on the official GitLab installation from source guide. GitLab does not officially support OS X whatsoever and is largely untested on the platform, so please think twice before installing this for use in a mission-critical environment. That said, GitLab CE does install and run on an OS X server with the following instructions, so if you're looking to set up a GitLab server for personal or small team use, read on!

Index

The GitLab installation consists of setting up the following components:

1. Packages / Dependencies
2. System User
3. Ruby
4. Go
5. Node
6. Database
7. Redis
8. GitLab
9. Nginx

1. Packages / Dependencies

First, install Homebrew if you haven't already (this will also automatically install XCode CLI tools if they're not installed yet):

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then, once it's installed, use it to install the following prerequisite packages:

brew install icu4c git logrotate libxml2 cmake pkg-config openssl python re2

2. System User

To create a user and group for GitLab on your system, you have two choices: through the "Users & Groups" pane in System Preferences, or through the command line via dscl.

To add the git user and group through the GUI, create a new Standard user account in System Preferences > Users & Groups with the Full Name 'GitLab' and Account Name 'git' (with a password of your choosing), then create a Group (last option in the New Account dropdown) with the name 'git' and add the user GitLab to it.

Alternatively, to create a new user and group through Terminal, run the following commands in order to create the group and user git:

LastUserID=$(dscl . -list /Users UniqueID | awk '{print $2}' | sort -n | tail -1)
NextUserID=$((LastUserID + 1))
sudo dscl . create /Users/git
sudo dscl . create /Users/git RealName "GitLab"
sudo dscl . create /Users/git hint "Password Hint"
sudo dscl . create /Users/git UniqueID $NextUserID
LastGroupID=$(dscl . readall /Groups | grep PrimaryGroupID | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort -n | tail -1)
NextGroupID=$(($LastGroupID + 1 ))
sudo dscl . create /Groups/git
sudo dscl . create /Groups/git RealName "GitLab"
sudo dscl . create /Groups/git passwd "*"
sudo dscl . create /Groups/git gid $NextGroupID
sudo dscl . create /Users/git PrimaryGroupID $NextGroupID
sudo dscl . create /Users/git UserShell $(which bash)
sudo dscl . create /Users/git NFSHomeDirectory /Users/git
sudo cp -R /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj /Users/git

Regardless of how you create your git user, you will need to proper ownership of its home directory using:

sudo chown -R git:git /Users/git

To hide the git user from the login screen:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add git

To unhide it:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList

3. Ruby

The use of Ruby version managers such as RVM, rbenv or chruby with GitLab in production frequently leads to hard to diagnose problems. For example, GitLab Shell is called from OpenSSH and having a version manager can prevent pushing and pulling over SSH. Version managers are not supported and we strongly advise everyone to follow the instructions below to use a system Ruby.

On OS X we are forced to use non-system ruby and install it using version manager.

Install rbenv and ruby-build

brew install rbenv ruby-build

Make sure rbenv loads in the git user's shell

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' | sudo -u git tee -a /Users/git/.profile
echo 'if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi' | sudo -u git tee -a /Users/git/.profile
sudo -u git cp /Users/git/.profile /Users/git/.bashrc

If you get the following error on OS X 10.8.5 or lower: ./bin/install:3: undefined method require_relative' for main:Object (NoMethodError)` Do the following to update to the proper Ruby version

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init - --no-rehash)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
. ~/.bash_profile

Install ruby for the git user

sudo -u git -H -i 'rbenv install 2.3.3'
sudo -u git -H -i 'rbenv global 2.3.3'

Install ruby for your user too (optional)

rbenv install 2.3.3
rbenv global 2.3.3

4. Go

Since GitLab 8.0, GitLab has several daemons written in Go. To install GitLab we need a Go compiler.

brew install go

5. Node

Since GitLab 8.17, GitLab requires the use of node >= v4.3.0 to compile javascript assets, and yarn >= v0.17.0 to manage javascript dependencies.

brew install node yarn

6. Database

Gitlab recommends using a PostgreSQL database. But you can use MySQL too, see MySQL setup guide.

brew install postgresql
brew services start postgresql

Login to PostgreSQL

psql -d postgres

Create a user for GitLab.

CREATE USER git CREATEDB;
ALTER USER git WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'MY_SECRET_PASSWORD';

Create the pg_trgm extension (required for GitLab 8.6+):

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pg_trgm;

Create the GitLab production database & grant all privileges on database

CREATE DATABASE gitlabhq_production OWNER git;

Quit the database session

\q

Try connecting to the new database with the new user

sudo -u git -H psql -d gitlabhq_production

7. Redis

GitLab also requires the redis package, which can also be installed with Homebrew:

brew install redis

Redis config is located in /usr/local/etc/redis.conf. Make a copy:

cp /usr/local/etc/redis.conf /usr/local/etc/redis.conf.orig

Disable Redis listening on TCP by setting 'port' to 0

sed 's/^port .*/port 0/' /usr/local/etc/redis.conf.orig | sudo tee /usr/local/etc/redis.conf

Edit file (nano /usr/local/etc/redis.conf) and uncomment:

unixsocket /tmp/redis.sock
unixsocketperm 777

Then, you can start redis as a service that will persist across reboots by running

brew services start redis

8. GitLab

cd /Users/git

Clone the Source

Clone GitLab repository

sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git -b 10-1-stable gitlab

Note: You can change 10-1-stable to master if you want the bleeding edge version, but never install master on a production server!

Configure It

Go to GitLab installation folder

cd /Users/git/gitlab

Copy the example GitLab config and edit it to suit OSX's directory structure:

sudo -u git -H cp config/gitlab.yml.example config/gitlab.yml
sudo -u git sed -i "" "s/\/usr\/bin\/git/\/usr\/local\/bin\/git/g" config/gitlab.yml
sudo -u git sed -i "" "s/\/home/\/Users/g" config/gitlab.yml

Update GitLab config file, follow the directions at top of file

sudo -u git -H nano config/gitlab.yml

Copy the example secrets file

sudo -u git -H cp config/secrets.yml.example config/secrets.yml
sudo -u git -H chmod 0600 config/secrets.yml

Make sure GitLab can write to the log/ and tmp/ directories

sudo chown -R git log/
sudo chown -R git tmp/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX,go-w log/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/

Make sure GitLab can write to the tmp/pids/ and tmp/sockets/ directories

sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/pids/
sudo chmod -R u+rwX tmp/sockets/

Create the public/uploads/ directory

sudo -u git -H mkdir public/uploads/

Make sure only the GitLab user has access to the public/uploads/ directory now that files in public/uploads are served by gitlab-workhorse

sudo chmod 0700 public/uploads

Change the permissions of the directory where CI job traces are stored

sudo chmod -R u+rwX builds/

Change the permissions of the directory where CI artifacts are stored

sudo chmod -R u+rwX shared/artifacts/

Change the permissions of the directory where GitLab Pages are stored

sudo chmod -R u+rwX shared/pages

Copy the example Unicorn config

sudo -u git -H cp config/unicorn.rb.example config/unicorn.rb
sudo -u git sed -i "" "s/\/home/\/Users/g" config/unicorn.rb

Find number of cores

sysctl -n hw.ncpu

Enable cluster mode if you expect to have a high load instance Ex. change amount of workers to 3 for 2GB RAM server Set the number of workers to at least the number of cores

sudo -u git -H nano config/unicorn.rb

Copy the example Rack attack config

sudo -u git -H cp config/initializers/rack_attack.rb.example config/initializers/rack_attack.rb

Configure Git global settings for git user, used when editing via web editor

sudo -u git -H git config --global core.autocrlf input

Disable git gc --auto because GitLab runs git gc for us already.

sudo -u git -H git config --global gc.auto 0

Configure Git to generate packfile bitmaps (introduced in Git 2.0) on the GitLab server during git gc.

sudo -u git -H git config --global repack.writeBitmaps true

Configure Redis connection settings

sudo -u git -H cp config/resque.yml.example config/resque.yml

Change the Redis socket path to /tmp/redis.sock:

sudo -u git -H nano config/resque.yml

Important Note: Make sure to edit both gitlab.yml and unicorn.rb to match your setup.

Note: If you want to use HTTPS, see Using HTTPS for the additional steps.

Configure GitLab DB Settings

PostgreSQL only:

sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.postgresql config/database.yml

MySQL only:

sudo -u git cp config/database.yml.mysql config/database.yml

MySQL and remote PostgreSQL only: Update username/password in config/database.yml. You only need to adapt the production settings (first part). If you followed the database guide then please do as follows: Change 'secure password' with the value you have given to $password You can keep the double quotes around the password

sudo -u git -H nano config/database.yml

PostgreSQL and MySQL: Make config/database.yml readable to git only

sudo -u git -H chmod o-rwx config/database.yml

Install Gems

Note: As of bundler 1.5.2, you can invoke bundle install -jN (where N the number of your processor cores) and enjoy the parallel gems installation with measurable difference in completion time (~60% faster). Check the number of your cores with nproc. For more information check this post. First make sure you have bundler >= 1.5.2 (run bundle -v) as it addresses some issues that were fixed in 1.5.2.

Preparation:

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
gem install bundler --no-ri --no-rdoc
rbenv rehash
cd ~/gitlab/

For PostgreSQL (note, the option says "without ... mysql")

bundle install --deployment --without development test mysql aws kerberos

Or if you use MySQL (note, the option says "without ... postgres")

bundle install --deployment --without development test postgres aws kerberos

Note: If you want to use Kerberos for user authentication, then omit kerberos in the --without option above.

Install GitLab Shell

GitLab Shell is an SSH access and repository management software developed specially for GitLab.

Run the installation task for gitlab-shell (replace REDIS_URL if needed):

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake gitlab:shell:install REDIS_URL=unix:/tmp/redis.sock RAILS_ENV=production

By default, the gitlab-shell config is generated from your main GitLab config. You can review (and modify) the gitlab-shell config as follows:

sudo -u git -H nano /Users/git/gitlab-shell/config.yml

Note: If you want to use HTTPS, see Using HTTPS for the additional steps.

Note: Make sure your hostname can be resolved on the machine itself by either a proper DNS record or an additional line in /etc/hosts ("127.0.0.1 hostname"). This might be necessary for example if you set up gitlab behind a reverse proxy. If the hostname cannot be resolved, the final installation check will fail with "Check GitLab API access: FAILED. code: 401" and pushing commits will be rejected with "[remote rejected] master -> master (hook declined)".

Install gitlab-workhorse

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake "gitlab:workhorse:install[/Users/git/gitlab-workhorse]" RAILS_ENV=production

Initialize Database and Activate Advanced Features

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production

Type 'yes' to create the database tables. When done you see 'Administrator account created:

Note: You can set the Administrator/root password by supplying it in environmental variable GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD as seen below. If you don't set the password (and it is set to the default one) please wait with exposing GitLab to the public internet until the installation is done and you've logged into the server the first time. During the first login you'll be forced to change the default password.

bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD=yourpassword

Secure secrets.yml

The secrets.yml file stores encryption keys for sessions and secure variables. Backup secrets.yml someplace safe, but don't store it in the same place as your database backups. Otherwise your secrets are exposed if one of your backups is compromised.

Install Init Script

Download the init script (will be /etc/init.d/gitlab):

cd /Users/git/gitlab
sudo mkdir -p /etc/init.d/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/default/
sudo cp lib/support/init.d/gitlab /etc/init.d/gitlab

Since you are installing to a folder other than default /home/users/git/gitlab, copy and edit the defaults file:

sudo -u git -H curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WebEntity/Installation-guide-for-GitLab-on-OS-X/master/gitlab.default.osx
sudo cp gitlab.default.osx /etc/default/gitlab.default

If you installed GitLab in another directory or as a user other than the default you should change these settings in /etc/default/gitlab. Do not edit /etc/init.d/gitlab as it will be changed on upgrade.

Install Gitaly

# Fetch Gitaly source with Git and compile with Go
sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake "gitlab:gitaly:install[/home/git/gitaly]" RAILS_ENV=production

You can specify a different Git repository by providing it as an extra paramter:

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake "gitlab:gitaly:install[/home/git/gitaly,https://example.com/gitaly.git]" RAILS_ENV=production

Next, make sure gitaly configured:

# Restrict Gitaly socket access
sudo chmod 0700 /Users/git/gitlab/tmp/sockets/private
sudo chown git /Users/git/gitlab/tmp/sockets/private

# If you are using non-default settings you need to update config.toml
cd /Users/git/gitaly
sudo -u git -H editor config.toml

For more information about configuring Gitaly see doc/administration/gitaly.

Setup Logrotate

sudo cp lib/support/logrotate/gitlab /usr/local/etc/logrotate.d/gitlab
sudo sed -i "" "s/\/home/\/Users/g" /usr/local/etc/logrotate.d/gitlab
brew services start logrotate

Check Application Status

Check if GitLab and its environment are configured correctly:

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake gitlab:env:info RAILS_ENV=production

Compile GetText PO files

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake gettext:pack RAILS_ENV=production
bundle exec rake gettext:po_to_json RAILS_ENV=production

Compile Assets

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
yarn install --production --pure-lockfile
bundle exec rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production

Start Your GitLab Instance

sudo sh /etc/init.d/gitlab start

9. Nginx

Note: Nginx is the officially supported web server for GitLab. If you cannot or do not want to use Nginx as your web server, have a look at the GitLab recipes.

Installation

brew tap homebrew/nginx
brew install nginx-full --with-realip
sudo mkdir -p /var/log/nginx/

Site Configuration

Default nginx configuration has an example server on port 8080, same as Gitlab Unicorn instance, which will collide and Gitlab won't start. Edit nginx configuration and comment out whole example server block for it to work together:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Copy the example site config:

sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/gitlab
sudo sed -i "" "s/\/home/\/Users/g" /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/gitlab

Make sure to edit the config file to match your setup:

Change YOUR_SERVER_FQDN to the fully-qualified domain name of your host serving GitLab.

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/nginx/servers/gitlab

Note: If you want to use HTTPS, replace the gitlab Nginx config with gitlab-ssl. See Using HTTPS for HTTPS configuration details.

Test Configuration

Validate your gitlab or gitlab-ssl Nginx config file with the following command:

sudo nginx -t

You should receive syntax is okay and test is successful messages. If you receive errors check your gitlab or gitlab-ssl Nginx config file for typos, etc. as indicated in the error message given.

Start

sudo brew services start nginx-full

Done!

Double-check Application Status

To make sure you didn't miss anything run a more thorough check with:

sudo su git
. ~/.profile
cd ~/gitlab/
bundle exec rake gitlab:check RAILS_ENV=production

If all items are green, then congratulations on successfully installing GitLab!

NOTE: Supply SANITIZE=true environment variable to gitlab:check to omit project names from the output of the check command.

Initial Login

Visit YOUR_SERVER in your web browser for your first GitLab login. The setup has created a default admin account for you. You can use it to log in:

root
5iveL!fe

Important Note: On login you'll be prompted to change the password.

Enjoy!

You can use sudo sh /etc/init.d/gitlab start, sudo sh /etc/init.d/gitlab stop and sudo sh /etc/init.d/gitlab restart to manually start, stop and restart GitLab.

Autostart on boot

Copy Nginx and Gitlab plists and load it:

sudo cp /usr/local/opt/nginx/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/
sudo cp com.webentity.gitlab.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.webentity.gitlab.plist

Advanced Setup Tips

Automated backups

Create log directory, copy in backup plist and load it To enable backup to function you will need to configure the backup options in config/gitlab.yml

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/var/log/gitlab
sudo chown git:git /usr/local/var/log/gitlab
sudo cp com.gitlab.backup.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.gitlab.backup.plist

Example external HD backup config settings

  ## Backup settings
  backup:
    path: "tmp/backups"   # Relative paths are relative to Rails.root (default: tmp/backups/)
    # archive_permissions: 0640 # Permissions for the resulting backup.tar file (default: 0600)
    # keep_time: 604800   # default: 0 (forever) (in seconds)
    # pg_schema: public     # default: nil, it means that all schemas will be backed up
    upload:
    #   # Fog storage connection settings, see http://fog.io/storage/ .
      connection:
        provider: Local
        local_root: '/Volumes/BackupHD/gitlab_backups'
      remote_directory: '.'
    #     provider: AWS
    #     region: eu-west-1
    #     aws_access_key_id: AKIAKIAKI
    #     aws_secret_access_key: 'secret123'
    #   # The remote 'directory' to store your backups. For S3, this would be the bucket name.
    #   remote_directory: 'my.s3.bucket'
    #   # Use multipart uploads when file size reaches 100MB, see
    #   #  http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/uploadobjusingmpu.html
    #   multipart_chunk_size: 104857600
    #   # Turns on AWS Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3-Managed Keys for backups, this is optional
    #   # encryption: 'AES256'

Using HTTPS

To use GitLab with HTTPS:

1. In gitlab.yml:
   1. Set the port option in section 1 to 443.
   2. Set the https option in section 1 to true.
2. In the config.yml of gitlab-shell:
   1. Set gitlab_url option to the HTTPS endpoint of GitLab (e.g. https://git.example.com).
   2. Set the certificates using either the ca_file or ca_path option.
3. Use the gitlab-ssl Nginx example config instead of the gitlab config.
   1. Update YOUR_SERVER_FQDN.
   2. Update ssl_certificate and ssl_certificate_key.
   3. Review the configuration file and consider applying other security and performance enhancing features.

Using a self-signed certificate is discouraged but if you must use it follow the normal directions then:

1. Generate a self-signed SSL certificate:

   mkdir -p /etc/nginx/ssl/
   cd /etc/nginx/ssl/
   sudo openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -x509 -nodes -days 3560 -out gitlab.crt -keyout gitlab.key
   sudo chmod o-r gitlab.key
   

2. In the config.yml of gitlab-shell set self_signed_cert to true.

SMTP configuration

If you're installing from source and use SMTP to deliver mail, you will need to add the following line to config/initializers/smtp_settings.rb:

ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp

See smtp_settings.rb.sample as an example.

More

You can find more tips in official documentation.