GitLab CE 19.1

GitLab Community Edition is a complete DevOps platform delivered as a single application. It provides Git repository hosting, CI/CD pipelines, issue tracking, a container registry, and more. Everything runs on your own infrastructure.

Software included

Component	Version
GitLab CE	19.1.x
Ubuntu	24.04 LTS

Environment variables

You can optionally set these when deploying GitLab from the marketplace. Leave any field blank to have a secure random value generated automatically.

Variable	Description
`GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD`	Initial password for the GitLab root account
`GITLAB_EXTERNAL_URL`	External URL GitLab is served from

Getting started

1. Connect to your VM

ssh ubuntu@<your-vm-ip>

2. Wait for first-boot configuration

On the first boot, a setup script runs automatically. It configures the external URL and runs gitlab-ctl reconfigure to initialise all GitLab services. This takes 3–5 minutes.

Track progress:

journalctl -u gitlab-first-boot.service -f

The MOTD on login will confirm when GitLab is ready.

3. Retrieve the initial root password

sudo cat /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password

4. Access the GitLab UI

Open a browser and navigate to your VM’s IP or hostname:

http://<your-vm-ip>

Field	Value
Username	`root`
Password	From `/etc/gitlab/initial_root_password`

Change your password immediately after first login.

Optional: set a custom external URL

If GitLab will be served at a domain name, provide the URL at deploy time using cloud-init userdata. Without it, GitLab defaults to http://<hostname>.

Add this to your VM’s userdata at deploy time:

#cloud-config
write_files:
  - path: /run/gitlab-external-url
    content: 'https://gitlab.example.com'
    permissions: '0600'
    owner: root:root

To change the URL after deployment, edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'

Then run:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Managing GitLab

# Check all service statuses
sudo gitlab-ctl status

# Restart all services
sudo gitlab-ctl restart

# View logs (all services)
sudo gitlab-ctl tail

# View logs for a specific service
sudo gitlab-ctl tail nginx
sudo gitlab-ctl tail puma

Configuration file: /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

After editing gitlab.rb, always run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure to apply changes.

Security

Port 80 is open by default. UFW is enabled.

To enable HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt, edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'
letsencrypt['enable'] = true
letsencrypt['contact_emails'] = ['admin@example.com']