How to Deploy GitLab Server Using Docker and Ubuntu Server 22.04

Have you ever wanted to host your own GitLab repositories to ensure your code never falls into the wrong hands? Although hosting your repositories on a third-party cloud host has plenty of advantages (such as availability and reliability), there’s something to be said about having total control over your repositories so that no one can access it without your approval.

With the help of both Ubuntu Server 22.04 and Docker, you can do just that. And I’m going to show you how it’s done. It’s not overly complicated, but there are a number of steps required. And so, without further ado, let’s get to work.

To accomplish this task, you’ll need a running instance of Ubuntu Server 22.04 and a user with sudo privileges. The instance of Ubuntu can be hosted on your LAN, or even in your cloud-hosted account (although hosting it via a third-party kind of defeats the purpose of a self-hosted repository). Either way, you’re ready to make some magic.

Install the Dependencies

The first thing we’ll do is install the required dependencies. Log in to your Ubuntu instance and install the required software with the command:

sudo apt install ca-certificates curl openssh-server apt-transport-https gnupg lsb-release -y

Next, we need to install the Community Edition of Docker. For this, we’ll add the official Docker GPG key with:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

Next, add the Docker repository:

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Update apt with the command:

sudo apt-get update

Finally, install Docker Community Edition with:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose -y

Add your user to the docker group with:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

So far, so good. Let’s move on.

Change the Default SSH Port

Because GitLab uses the default SSH port, you must change the default SSH server port. Otherwise, there’ll be a conflict. Open the SSH config file with:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

In that file, look for the line:

Change that line to:

Enable port 22 to pass through the firewall with:

sudo ufw allow 2022

Make sure to test the SSH connection with another login using the command:

ssh USER@SERVER -p 2022

Where USER is your remote user name and SERVER is the IP address or domain of the hosting server.

Create a New Docker Volume

We’re now ready to move on to the Docker side of things. The first thing we’ll do is create a new volume. First, create a directory to house the files with:

sudo mkdir -p /srv/gitlab

Next, create a directory that will house our Docker compose file with:

mkdir ~/docker-gitlab

Change into that directory with:

cd ~/docker-gitlab

Create a file to house environment variables with:

nano .env

Paste the following into that new file:

GITLAB_HOME=/srv/gitlab

Save and close the file.

Create the Docker Compose File

Create a new compose file with:

nano docker-compose.yml

In that file, paste the following (make sure to change anything in bold to suit your environment/needs):

Save and close the file.

Deploy the Container

We’re now ready to deploy the container. To do that, issue the command:

docker-compose up -d

The deployment of the container will take some time (anywhere between 10-30 minutes, depending on the speed of your network connection), so either sit back and watch the output fly by or take care of some other task. When the deployment completes, you’ll need to access the automatically generated root password with the command:

sudo cat /srv/gitlab/config/initial_root_password

You should see a long string of random characters that will serve as your root password login.

Accessing GitLab

Open a web browser and point it to http://SERVER (where SERVER is the IP address or domain of your server). You’ll be greeted by the GitLab login screen (see Figure 1), where you’ll type the username root and paste the password you found in the intial_root_password file, as shown above. If the site doesn’t come up immediately, give it some time for the containers to finish being deployed. Keep refreshing your web browser until the login screen appears.

Figure 1: The GitLab login screen means success!

An Alternative Method of Deployment

If you find you have trouble with the above deployment, here’s another method.

Set up the volume location with:

Deploy the container with this (make sure to change anything in bold to suit your needs):

One of the above methods should work to get GitLab deployed. If you still have problems, you may change the outward-facing SSH port to something like 10022, so that option would look like —publish 10022:22.

Finally, if you still have problems getting GitLab to deploy, here’s another option:

docker run -d -p 22:22 -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \

  --name gitlab --hostname gitlab.example.com \

  --restart unless-stopped --shm-size 256m \

  -v gitlab_config:/etc/gitlab -v gitlab_logs:/var/log/gitlab \

  -v gitlab_data:/var/opt/gitlab gitlab/gitlab-ce:14.7.0-ce.0


Congratulations! You now have a working GitLab repository that can be used within your LAN.