Forwarding to GitLab Subdomain with Existing Nginx Installation

Question

I\'ve been following the instructions from the GitLab wiki, however, it seems as if some key pieces of information are missing. In the section \"Using a Non-Bundled Web Serv

Answer 1

It took me a couple of days to get everything sorted out, so I wanted to share the steps it took to get it all working. This is how to install Nginx for a website and get it working with an existing gitlab repo (that uses a bundled version of Nginx). MY gitlab repo is on a subdomain of my website called 'repos'.

Open a terminal and install Nginx:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

Find your user name, which you will need when configuring gitlab: In my case this was 'nginx':

user   nginx;

Add this line inside the http{ } block :

$include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

Example:

http{
    include  etc/nginx/mime.types;
    include  etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

    (more stuff...)
}

Edit configuration file /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

Change this line:

external_url 'GENERATED_EXTERNAL_URL' 

To:

external_url 'http://www.example.com/repos'  // (whatever your server name is)  

Uncomment and change this line:

nginx['enable'] = true

To:

nginx['enable'] = false

Uncomment and change this line:

web_server['external_users'] = []    

To:

web_server['external_users'] = ['nginx']     // or whatever your nginx user is called, sometimes it's 'www-data'

Nginx needs a configuration file for gitlab:

On the GitLab recipes repository: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-recipes/tree/master/web-server/nginx find 'gitlab-omnibus-nginx.conf'. Put that file in the folder /etc/nginx/sites-enabled (you may need to create the sites-enabled folder)

Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab-omnibus-nginx.conf:

Change this line:

server_name YOUR_SERVER_FQDN

To:

server_name www.example.com/repos     // (or whatever your server name is)

You will need to change the port that gitlab is on so that the website and git server both work.

Change this line:

listen 0.0.0.0:80 default_server;

To:

listen 0.0.0.0:8081; 

Change this line:

listen [::]:80  default_server;

To:

listen [::]:8081;

Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:

Make this the default server:

listen    80 default_server;
server_name  localhost;

Add a second location for the gitlab repo and use proxy_pass to point to the port you put Gitlab on. I put my Gitlab in the sub-directory 'repos'. The number 127.0.0.1 means localhost (the same computer):

location / {
    root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    index  index.html index.htm;
}
location /repos/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081;
}

Run these commands in the terminal:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo service nginx restart

Your webserver and gitlab should now both be working and accessible online. Nginx will default to /usr/share/nginx/html when a user visits your webserver. There is a default .html file there. That is where you can put files for your website.