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GitLab

Upgrade GitLab by using the GitLab package (FREE SELF)

You can upgrade GitLab to a new version by using the GitLab package.

Prerequisites

  • Decide when to upgrade by viewing the supported upgrade paths. You can't directly skip major versions (for example, go from 10.3 to 12.7 in one step).
  • If you are upgrading from a non-package installation to a GitLab package installation, see Upgrading from a non-package installation to a GitLab package installation.
  • Ensure that any background migrations are fully completed. Upgrading before background migrations have finished can lead to data corruption. We recommend performing upgrades between major and minor releases no more than once per week, to allow time for background migrations to finish.
  • Gitaly servers must be upgraded to the newer version prior to upgrading the application server. This prevents the gRPC client on the application server from sending RPCs that the old Gitaly version does not support.

Downtime

  • For single node installations, GitLab is not available to users while an upgrade is in progress. The user's web browser shows a Deploy in progress message or a 502 error.
  • For multi-node installations, see how to perform zero downtime upgrades.

Version-specific changes

Upgrading versions might need some manual intervention. For more information, check the version your are upgrading to:

Back up before upgrading

The GitLab database is backed up before installing a newer GitLab version. You may skip this automatic database backup by creating an empty file at /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-backup:

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

Nevertheless, it is highly recommended to maintain a full up-to-date backup on your own.

Upgrade using the official repositories

All GitLab packages are posted to the GitLab package server. Five repositories are maintained:

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

Upgrade to the latest version using the official repositories

If you upgrade GitLab regularly, for example once a month, you can upgrade to the latest version by using your package manager.

To upgrade to the latest GitLab version:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt update && sudo apt install gitlab-ee

# RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
sudo yum install gitlab-ee

# RHEL/CentOS 8
sudo dnf install gitlab-ee

# SUSE
sudo zypper install gitlab-ee

NOTE: For the GitLab Community Edition, replace gitlab-ee with gitlab-ce.

Upgrade to a specific version using the official repositories

Linux package managers default to installing the latest available version of a package for installation and upgrades. Upgrading directly to the latest major version can be problematic for older GitLab versions that require a multi-stage upgrade path. An upgrade path can span multiple versions, so you must specify the specific GitLab package with each upgrade.

To specify the intended GitLab version number in your package manager's install or upgrade command:

  1. Identify the version number of the installed package:

    # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-cache madison gitlab-ee

# RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
yum --showduplicates list gitlab-ee

# RHEL/CentOS 8
dnf --showduplicates list gitlab-ee

# SUSE
zypper search -s gitlab-ee

  2. Install the specific gitlab-ee package by using one of the following commands and replacing <version> with the version you found in the previous step:

    # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install gitlab-ee=<version>

# RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7
yum install gitlab-ee-<version>

# RHEL/CentOS 8
dnf install gitlab-ee-<version>

# SUSE
zypper install gitlab-ee=<version>

NOTE: For the GitLab Community Edition, replace gitlab-ee with gitlab-ce.

Upgrade using a manually-downloaded package

NOTE: The package repository is recommended over a manual installation.

If for some reason you don't use the official repositories, you can download the package and install it manually. This method can be used to either install GitLab for the first time or update it.

To download and install GitLab:

  1. Visit the official repository of your package.

  2. Filter the list by searching for the version you want to install (for example 14.1.8). Multiple packages may exist for a single version, one for each supported distribution and architecture. Next to the filename is a label indicating the distribution, as the filenames may be the same.

  3. Find the package version you wish to install, and select the filename from the list.

  4. Select Download in the upper right corner to download the package.

  5. After the package is downloaded, install it by using one of the following commands and replacing <package_name> with the package name you downloaded:

    # Debian/Ubuntu
dpkg -i <package_name>

# CentOS/RHEL
rpm -Uvh <package_name>

# SUSE
zypper install <package_name>

NOTE: For the GitLab Community Edition, replace gitlab-ee with gitlab-ce.

Troubleshooting

GitLab 13.7 and later unavailable on Amazon Linux 2

Amazon Linux 2 is not an officially supported operating system. However, in past the official package installation script installed the el/6 package repository if run on Amazon Linux. From GitLab 13.7, we no longer provide el/6 packages so administrators must run the installation script again to update the repository to el/7:

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

See the epic on support for GitLab on Amazon Linux 2 for the latest details on official Amazon Linux 2 support.

Get the status of a GitLab installation

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

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

Package obsoleted by installed package

CE and EE packages are marked as obsoleting and replacing each other so that both aren't installed and running at the same time.

If you are using local RPM files to switch from CE to EE or vice versa, use rpm for installing the package rather than yum. If you try to use yum, then you may get an error like this:

Cannot install package gitlab-ee-11.8.3-ee.0.el6.x86_64. It is obsoleted by installed package gitlab-ce-11.8.3-ce.0.el6.x86_64

To avoid this issue, either:

500 error when accessing Project > Settings > Repository

This error occurs when GitLab is converted from CE > EE > CE, and then back to EE. When viewing a project's repository settings, you can view this error in the logs:

Processing by Projects::Settings::RepositoryController#show as HTML
  Parameters: {"namespace_id"=>"<namespace_id>", "project_id"=>"<project_id>"}
Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 62ms (ActiveRecord: 4.7ms | Elasticsearch: 0.0ms | Allocations: 14583)

NoMethodError (undefined method `commit_message_negative_regex' for #<PushRule:0x00007fbddf4229b8>
Did you mean?  commit_message_regex_change):

This error is caused by an EE feature being added to a CE instance on the initial move to EE. After the instance is moved back to CE and then is upgraded to EE again, the push_rules table already exists in the database. Therefore, a migration is unable to add the commit_message_regex_change column.

This results in the backport migration of EE tables not working correctly. The backport migration assumes that certain tables in the database do not exist when running CE.

To fix this issue:

  1. Start a database console:

    In GitLab 14.2 and later:

    sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole --database main

    In GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

    sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

  2. Manually add the missing commit_message_negative_regex column:

    ALTER TABLE push_rules ADD COLUMN commit_message_negative_regex VARCHAR;

# Exit psql
\q

  3. Restart GitLab:

    sudo gitlab-ctl restart

Error Failed to connect to the internal GitLab API on a separate GitLab Pages server

Please see GitLab Pages troubleshooting.