Back up and restore GitLab (FREE SELF)

GitLab provides Rake tasks for backing up and restoring GitLab instances.

An application data backup creates an archive file that contains the database, all repositories and all attachments.

You can only restore a backup to exactly the same version and type (CE/EE) of GitLab on which it was created. The best way to migrate your repositories from one server to another is through backup restore.

WARNING: GitLab doesn't back up items that aren't stored in the file system. If you're using object storage, be sure to enable backups with your object storage provider, if desired.

Requirements

To be able to backup and restore, ensure that Rsync is installed on your system. If you installed GitLab:

• Using the Omnibus package, you're all set.

• From source, you need to determine if rsync is installed. For example:

  # Debian/Ubuntu
  sudo apt-get install rsync
  
  # RHEL/CentOS
  sudo yum install rsync

Backup timestamp

The backup archive is saved in backup_path, which is specified in the config/gitlab.yml file. The filename is [TIMESTAMP]_gitlab_backup.tar, where TIMESTAMP identifies the time at which each backup was created, plus the GitLab version. The timestamp is needed if you need to restore GitLab and multiple backups are available.

For example, if the backup name is 1493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce_gitlab_backup.tar, the timestamp is 1493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce.

Back up GitLab

GitLab provides a command line interface to back up your entire instance, including:

• Database
• Attachments
• Git repositories data
• CI/CD job output logs
• CI/CD job artifacts
• LFS objects
• Container Registry images
• GitLab Pages content
• Snippets
• Group wikis (PREMIUM)

WARNING: GitLab does not back up any configuration files, SSL certificates, or system files. You are highly advised to read about storing configuration files.

Depending on your version of GitLab, use the following command if you installed GitLab using the Omnibus package:

• GitLab 12.2 or later:

  sudo gitlab-backup create

• GitLab 12.1 and earlier:

  gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

If you installed GitLab from source, use the following command:

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create RAILS_ENV=production

If you're running GitLab from within a Docker container, run the backup from the host, based on your installed version of GitLab:

• GitLab 12.2 or later:

  docker exec -t <container name> gitlab-backup create

• GitLab 12.1 and earlier:

  docker exec -t <container name> gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

If you're using the GitLab Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster, you can run the backup task by using kubectl to run the backup-utility script on the GitLab task runner pod. For more details, see backing up a GitLab installation.

kubectl exec -it <gitlab task-runner pod> backup-utility

Similar to the Kubernetes case, if you have scaled out your GitLab cluster to use multiple application servers, you should pick a designated node (that isn't auto-scaled away) for running the backup Rake task. Because the backup Rake task is tightly coupled to the main Rails application, this is typically a node on which you're also running Unicorn/Puma or Sidekiq.

Example output:

Dumping database tables:
- Dumping table events... [DONE]
- Dumping table issues... [DONE]
- Dumping table keys... [DONE]
- Dumping table merge_requests... [DONE]
- Dumping table milestones... [DONE]
- Dumping table namespaces... [DONE]
- Dumping table notes... [DONE]
- Dumping table projects... [DONE]
- Dumping table protected_branches... [DONE]
- Dumping table schema_migrations... [DONE]
- Dumping table services... [DONE]
- Dumping table snippets... [DONE]
- Dumping table taggings... [DONE]
- Dumping table tags... [DONE]
- Dumping table users... [DONE]
- Dumping table users_projects... [DONE]
- Dumping table web_hooks... [DONE]
- Dumping table wikis... [DONE]
Dumping repositories:
- Dumping repository abcd... [DONE]
Creating backup archive: $TIMESTAMP_gitlab_backup.tar [DONE]
Deleting tmp directories...[DONE]
Deleting old backups... [SKIPPING]

Storing configuration files

The backup Rake task GitLab provides does not store your configuration files. The primary reason for this is that your database contains items including encrypted information for two-factor authentication and the CI/CD secure variables. Storing encrypted information in the same location as its key defeats the purpose of using encryption in the first place.

WARNING: The secrets file is essential to preserve your database encryption key.

At the very minimum, you must backup:

For Omnibus:

• /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json
• /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

For installation from source:

• /home/git/gitlab/config/secrets.yml
• /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml

For Docker installations, you must back up the volume where the configuration files are stored. If you created the GitLab container according to the documentation, it should be in the /srv/gitlab/config directory.

For GitLab Helm chart installations on a Kubernetes cluster, you must follow the Backup the secrets instructions.

You may also want to back up any TLS keys and certificates, and your SSH host keys.

If you use Omnibus GitLab, review additional information to backup your configuration.

In the unlikely event that the secrets file is lost, see the troubleshooting section.

Backup options

The command line tool GitLab provides to backup your instance can accept more options.

Backup strategy option

The default backup strategy is to essentially stream data from the respective data locations to the backup using the Linux command tar and gzip. This works fine in most cases, but can cause problems when data is rapidly changing.

When data changes while tar is reading it, the error file changed as we read it may occur, and causes the backup process to fail. To combat this, 8.17 introduces a new backup strategy called copy. The strategy copies data files to a temporary location before calling tar and gzip, avoiding the error.

A side-effect is that the backup process takes up to an additional 1X disk space. The process does its best to clean up the temporary files at each stage so the problem doesn't compound, but it could be a considerable change for large installations. This is why the copy strategy is not the default in 8.17.

To use the copy strategy instead of the default streaming strategy, specify STRATEGY=copy in the Rake task command. For example:

sudo gitlab-backup create STRATEGY=copy

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

Backup filename

WARNING: If you use a custom backup filename, you can't limit the lifetime of the backups.

By default, a backup file is created according to the specification in the previous Backup timestamp section. You can, however, override the [TIMESTAMP] portion of the filename by setting the BACKUP environment variable. For example:

sudo gitlab-backup create BACKUP=dump

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

The resulting file is named dump_gitlab_backup.tar. This is useful for systems that make use of rsync and incremental backups, and results in considerably faster transfer speeds.

Confirm archive can be transferred

To ensure the generated archive is transferable by rsync, you can set the GZIP_RSYNCABLE=yes option. This sets the --rsyncable option to gzip, which is useful only in combination with setting the Backup filename option.

Note that the --rsyncable option in gzip isn't guaranteed to be available on all distributions. To verify that it's available in your distribution, run gzip --help or consult the man pages.

sudo gitlab-backup create BACKUP=dump GZIP_RSYNCABLE=yes

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

Excluding specific directories from the backup

You can exclude specific directories from the backup by adding the environment variable SKIP, whose values are a comma-separated list of the following options:

• db (database)
• uploads (attachments)
• builds (CI job output logs)
• artifacts (CI job artifacts)
• lfs (LFS objects)
• registry (Container Registry images)
• pages (Pages content)
• repositories (Git repositories data)

All wikis are backed up as part of the repositories group. Non-existent wikis are skipped during a backup.

NOTE: When backing up and restoring Helm Charts, there is an additional option packages, which refers to any packages managed by the GitLab package registry. For more information see command line arguments.

All wikis are backed up as part of the repositories group. Non-existent wikis are skipped during a backup.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

sudo gitlab-backup create SKIP=db,uploads

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

For installations from source:

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create SKIP=db,uploads RAILS_ENV=production

Skipping tar creation

The last part of creating a backup is generation of a .tar file containing all the parts. In some cases (for example, if the backup is picked up by other backup software) creating a .tar file might be wasted effort or even directly harmful, so you can skip this step by adding tar to the SKIP environment variable.

Adding tar to the SKIP variable leaves the files and directories containing the backup in the directory used for the intermediate files. These files are overwritten when a new backup is created, so you should make sure they are copied elsewhere, because you can only have one backup on the system.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

sudo gitlab-backup create SKIP=tar

For installations from source:

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create SKIP=tar RAILS_ENV=production

Disabling prompts during restore

During a restore from backup, the restore script may ask for confirmation before proceeding. If you wish to disable these prompts, you can set the GITLAB_ASSUME_YES environment variable to 1.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

sudo GITLAB_ASSUME_YES=1 gitlab-backup restore

For installations from source:

sudo -u git -H GITLAB_ASSUME_YES=1 bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:restore RAILS_ENV=production

Back up Git repositories concurrently

Introduced in GitLab 13.3.

When using multiple repository storages, repositories can be backed up concurrently to help fully use CPU time. The following variables are available to modify the default behavior of the Rake task:

• GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_CONCURRENCY: The maximum number of projects to back up at the same time. Defaults to 1.
• GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_STORAGE_CONCURRENCY: The maximum number of projects to back up at the same time on each storage. This allows the repository backups to be spread across storages. Defaults to 1.

For example, for Omnibus GitLab installations with 4 repository storages:

sudo gitlab-backup create GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_CONCURRENCY=4 GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_STORAGE_CONCURRENCY=1

For example, for installations from source:

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_CONCURRENCY=4 GITLAB_BACKUP_MAX_STORAGE_CONCURRENCY=1

Uploading backups to a remote (cloud) storage

You can let the backup script upload (using the Fog library) the .tar file it creates. In the following example, we use Amazon S3 for storage, but Fog also lets you use other storage providers. GitLab also imports cloud drivers for AWS, Google, OpenStack Swift, Rackspace, and Aliyun. A local driver is also available.

Read more about using object storage with GitLab.

Using Amazon S3

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
     'provider' => 'AWS',
     'region' => 'eu-west-1',
     'aws_access_key_id' => 'AKIAKIAKI',
     'aws_secret_access_key' => 'secret123'
     # If using an IAM Profile, don't configure aws_access_key_id & aws_secret_access_key
     # 'use_iam_profile' => true
   }
   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = 'my.s3.bucket'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

Digital Ocean Spaces

This example can be used for a bucket in Amsterdam (AMS3):

1. Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
     'provider' => 'AWS',
     'region' => 'ams3',
     'aws_access_key_id' => 'AKIAKIAKI',
     'aws_secret_access_key' => 'secret123',
     'endpoint'              => 'https://ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com'
   }
   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = 'my.s3.bucket'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

If you see a 400 Bad Request error message when using Digital Ocean Spaces, the cause may be the use of backup encryption. Because Digital Ocean Spaces doesn't support encryption, remove or comment the line that contains gitlab_rails['backup_encryption'].

Other S3 Providers

Not all S3 providers are fully compatible with the Fog library. For example, if you see a 411 Length Required error message after attempting to upload, you may need to downgrade the aws_signature_version value from the default value to 2, due to this issue.

For installations from source:

1. Edit home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

     backup:
       # snip
       upload:
         # Fog storage connection settings, see http://fog.io/storage/ .
         connection:
           provider: AWS
           region: eu-west-1
           aws_access_key_id: AKIAKIAKI
           aws_secret_access_key: 'secret123'
           # If using an IAM Profile, leave aws_access_key_id & aws_secret_access_key empty
           # ie. aws_access_key_id: ''
           # use_iam_profile: 'true'
         # The remote 'directory' to store your backups. For S3, this would be the bucket name.
         remote_directory: 'my.s3.bucket'
         # Turns on AWS Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3-Managed Keys for backups, this is optional
         # encryption: 'AES256'
         # Turns on AWS Server-Side Encryption with Amazon Customer-Provided Encryption Keys for backups, this is optional
         #   This should be set to the encryption key for Amazon S3 to use to encrypt or decrypt your data.
         #   'encryption' must also be set in order for this to have any effect.
         #   To avoid storing the key on disk, the key can also be specified via the `GITLAB_BACKUP_ENCRYPTION_KEY` environment variable.
         # encryption_key: '<key>'
         # Specifies Amazon S3 storage class to use for backups, this is optional
         # storage_class: 'STANDARD'

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect

If you're uploading your backups to S3, you should create a new IAM user with restricted access rights. To give the upload user access only for uploading backups create the following IAM profile, replacing my.s3.bucket with the name of your bucket:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1412062044000",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
        "s3:GetBucketAcl",
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:GetObjectAcl",
        "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads",
        "s3:PutObject",
        "s3:PutObjectAcl"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::my.s3.bucket/*"
      ]
    },
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1412062097000",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",
        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "*"
      ]
    },
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1412062128000",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:ListBucket"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::my.s3.bucket"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Using Google Cloud Storage

To use Google Cloud Storage to save backups, you must first create an access key from the Google console:

1. Go to the Google storage settings page.
2. Select Interoperability, and then create an access key.
3. Make note of the Access Key and Secret and replace them in the following configurations.
4. In the buckets advanced settings ensure the Access Control option Set object-level and bucket-level permissions is selected.
5. Ensure you have already created a bucket.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
     'provider' => 'Google',
     'google_storage_access_key_id' => 'Access Key',
     'google_storage_secret_access_key' => 'Secret',
   
     ## If you have CNAME buckets (foo.example.com), you might run into SSL issues
     ## when uploading backups ("hostname foo.example.com.storage.googleapis.com
     ## does not match the server certificate"). In that case, uncomnent the following
     ## setting. See: https://github.com/fog/fog/issues/2834
     #'path_style' => true
   }
   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = 'my.google.bucket'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

For installations from source:

1. Edit home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

     backup:
       upload:
         connection:
           provider: 'Google'
           google_storage_access_key_id: 'Access Key'
           google_storage_secret_access_key: 'Secret'
         remote_directory: 'my.google.bucket'

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect

Using Azure Blob storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.4.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
    'provider' => 'AzureRM',
    'azure_storage_account_name' => '<AZURE STORAGE ACCOUNT NAME>',
    'azure_storage_access_key' => '<AZURE STORAGE ACCESS KEY>',
    'azure_storage_domain' => 'blob.core.windows.net', # Optional
   }
   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = '<AZURE BLOB CONTAINER>'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

For installations from source:

1. Edit home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

     backup:
       upload:
         connection:
           provider: 'AzureRM'
           azure_storage_account_name: '<AZURE STORAGE ACCOUNT NAME>'
           azure_storage_access_key: '<AZURE STORAGE ACCESS KEY>'
         remote_directory: '<AZURE BLOB CONTAINER>'

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect

For more details, see the table of Azure parameters.

Specifying a custom directory for backups

This option works only for remote storage. If you want to group your backups, you can pass a DIRECTORY environment variable:

sudo gitlab-backup create DIRECTORY=daily
sudo gitlab-backup create DIRECTORY=weekly

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

Uploading to locally mounted shares

You may also send backups to a mounted share (for example, NFS,CIFS, or SMB) by using the Fog Local storage provider. The directory pointed to by the local_root key must be owned by the git user when mounted (mounting with the uid= of the git user for CIFS and SMB) or the user that you are executing the backup tasks as (for Omnibus packages, this is the git user).

The backup_upload_remote_directory must be set in addition to the local_root key. This is the sub directory inside the mounted directory that backups are copied to, and is created if it does not exist. If the directory that you want to copy the tarballs to is the root of your mounted directory, use . instead.

Because file system performance may affect overall GitLab performance, GitLab doesn't recommend using cloud-based file systems for storage.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_connection'] = {
     :provider => 'Local',
     :local_root => '/mnt/backups'
   }
   
   # The directory inside the mounted folder to copy backups to
   # Use '.' to store them in the root directory
   gitlab_rails['backup_upload_remote_directory'] = 'gitlab_backups'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

1. Edit home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

   backup:
     upload:
       # Fog storage connection settings, see http://fog.io/storage/ .
       connection:
         provider: Local
         local_root: '/mnt/backups'
       # The directory inside the mounted folder to copy backups to
       # Use '.' to store them in the root directory
       remote_directory: 'gitlab_backups'

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Backup archive permissions

The backup archives created by GitLab (1393513186_2014_02_27_gitlab_backup.tar) have the owner/group git/git and 0600 permissions by default. This is meant to avoid other system users reading GitLab data. If you need the backup archives to have different permissions, you can use the archive_permissions setting.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['backup_archive_permissions'] = 0644 # Makes the backup archives world-readable

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

1. Edit /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

   backup:
     archive_permissions: 0644 # Makes the backup archives world-readable

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Configuring cron to make daily backups

WARNING: The following cron jobs do not backup your GitLab configuration files or SSH host keys.

You can schedule a cron job that backs up your repositories and GitLab metadata.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit the crontab for the root user:

   sudo su -
   crontab -e

2. There, add the following line to schedule the backup for everyday at 2 AM:

   0 2 * * * /opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-backup create CRON=1

   Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

For installations from source:

1. Edit the crontab for the git user:

   sudo -u git crontab -e

2. Add the following lines at the bottom:

   # Create a full backup of the GitLab repositories and SQL database every day at 2am
   0 2 * * * cd /home/git/gitlab && PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create RAILS_ENV=production CRON=1

The CRON=1 environment setting directs the backup script to hide all progress output if there aren't any errors. This is recommended to reduce cron spam.

Limit backup lifetime for local files (prune old backups)

WARNING: The process described in this section don't work if you used a custom filename for your backups.

To prevent regular backups from using all your disk space, you may want to set a limited lifetime for backups. The next time the backup task runs, backups older than the backup_keep_time are pruned.

This configuration option manages only local files. GitLab doesn't prune old files stored in a third-party object storage because the user may not have permission to list and delete files. It's recommended that you configure the appropriate retention policy for your object storage (for example, AWS S3).

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   ## Limit backup lifetime to 7 days - 604800 seconds
   gitlab_rails['backup_keep_time'] = 604800

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

1. Edit /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

   backup:
     ## Limit backup lifetime to 7 days - 604800 seconds
     keep_time: 604800

2. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Restore GitLab

GitLab provides a command line interface to restore your entire installation, and is flexible enough to fit your needs.

The restore prerequisites section includes crucial information. Be sure to read and test the complete restore process at least once before attempting to perform it in a production environment.

You can restore a backup only to the exact same version and type (CE/EE) of GitLab that you created it on (for example CE 9.1.0).

If your backup is a different version than the current installation, you must downgrade your GitLab installation before restoring the backup.

Restore prerequisites

You need to have a working GitLab installation before you can perform a restore. This is because the system user performing the restore actions (git) is usually not allowed to create or delete the SQL database needed to import data into (gitlabhq_production). All existing data is either erased (SQL) or moved to a separate directory (such as repositories and uploads).

To restore a backup, you must restore /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json (for Omnibus packages) or /home/git/gitlab/.secret (for installations from source). This file contains the database encryption key, CI/CD variables, and variables used for two-factor authentication. If you fail to restore this encryption key file along with the application data backup, users with two-factor authentication enabled and GitLab Runner loses access to your GitLab server.

You may also want to restore any TLS keys, certificates, or SSH host keys.

Starting with GitLab 12.9, if an untarred backup (like the ones made with SKIP=tar) is found, and no backup is chosen with BACKUP=<timestamp>, the untarred backup is used.

Depending on your case, you might want to run the restore command with one or more of the following options:

• BACKUP=timestamp_of_backup: Required if more than one backup exists. Read what the backup timestamp is about.
• force=yes: Doesn't ask if the authorized_keys file should get regenerated, and assumes 'yes' for warning about database tables being removed, enabling the "Write to authorized_keys file" setting, and updating LDAP providers.

If you're restoring into directories that are mount points, you must ensure these directories are empty before attempting a restore. Otherwise, GitLab attempts to move these directories before restoring the new data, which causes an error.

Read more about configuring NFS mounts

Restore for installation from source

First, ensure your backup tar file is in the backup directory described in the gitlab.yml configuration:

## Backup settings
backup:
  path: "tmp/backups"   # Relative paths are relative to Rails.root (default: tmp/backups/)

The default is /home/git/gitlab/tmp/backups, and it needs to be owned by the git user. Now, you can begin the backup procedure:

# Stop processes that are connected to the database
sudo service gitlab stop

sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:restore RAILS_ENV=production

Example output:

Unpacking backup... [DONE]
Restoring database tables:
-- create_table("events", {:force=>true})
   -> 0.2231s
[...]
- Loading fixture events...[DONE]
- Loading fixture issues...[DONE]
- Loading fixture keys...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture merge_requests...[DONE]
- Loading fixture milestones...[DONE]
- Loading fixture namespaces...[DONE]
- Loading fixture notes...[DONE]
- Loading fixture projects...[DONE]
- Loading fixture protected_branches...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture schema_migrations...[DONE]
- Loading fixture services...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture snippets...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture taggings...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture tags...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture users...[DONE]
- Loading fixture users_projects...[DONE]
- Loading fixture web_hooks...[SKIPPING]
- Loading fixture wikis...[SKIPPING]
Restoring repositories:
- Restoring repository abcd... [DONE]
- Object pool 1 ...
Deleting tmp directories...[DONE]

Next, restore /home/git/gitlab/.secret if necessary, as previously mentioned.

Restart GitLab:

sudo service gitlab restart

Restore for Omnibus GitLab installations

This procedure assumes that:

• You have installed the exact same version and type (CE/EE) of GitLab Omnibus with which the backup was created.
• You have run sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure at least once.
• GitLab is running. If not, start it using sudo gitlab-ctl start.

First ensure your backup tar file is in the backup directory described in the gitlab.rb configuration gitlab_rails['backup_path']. The default is /var/opt/gitlab/backups. It needs to be owned by the git user.

sudo cp 11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce_gitlab_backup.tar /var/opt/gitlab/backups/
sudo chown git.git /var/opt/gitlab/backups/11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce_gitlab_backup.tar

Stop the processes that are connected to the database. Leave the rest of GitLab running:

sudo gitlab-ctl stop unicorn
sudo gitlab-ctl stop puma
sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq
# Verify
sudo gitlab-ctl status

Next, restore the backup, specifying the timestamp of the backup you wish to restore:

# This command will overwrite the contents of your GitLab database!
sudo gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore instead.

WARNING: gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore doesn't set the correct file system permissions on your Registry directory. This is a known issue. In GitLab 12.2 or later, you can use gitlab-backup restore to avoid this issue.

If there's a GitLab version mismatch between your backup tar file and the installed version of GitLab, the restore command aborts with an error message. Install the correct GitLab version, and then try again.

NOTE: There is a known issue with restore not working with pgbouncer. Read more about backup and restore with pgbouncer.

Next, restore /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json if necessary, as previously mentioned.

Reconfigure, restart and check GitLab:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo gitlab-ctl restart
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check SANITIZE=true

In GitLab 13.1 and later, check database values can be decrypted especially if /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json was restored, or if a different server is the target for the restore.

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:doctor:secrets

Restore for Docker image and GitLab Helm chart installations

For GitLab installations using the Docker image or the GitLab Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster, the restore task expects the restore directories to be empty. However, with Docker and Kubernetes volume mounts, some system level directories may be created at the volume roots, such as the lost+found directory found in Linux operating systems. These directories are usually owned by root, which can cause access permission errors since the restore Rake task runs as the git user. To restore a GitLab installation, users have to confirm the restore target directories are empty.

For both these installation types, the backup tarball has to be available in the backup location (default location is /var/opt/gitlab/backups).

For Docker installations, the restore task can be run from host:

# Stop the processes that are connected to the database
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-ctl stop unicorn
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-ctl stop puma
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq

# Verify that the processes are all down before continuing
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-ctl status

# Run the restore
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce

# Restart the GitLab container
docker restart <name of container>

# Check GitLab
docker exec -it <name of container> gitlab-rake gitlab:check SANITIZE=true

Users of GitLab 12.1 and earlier should use the command gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create instead.

WARNING: gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore doesn't set the correct file system permissions on your Registry directory. This is a known issue. In GitLab 12.2 or later, you can use gitlab-backup restore to avoid this issue.

The GitLab Helm chart uses a different process, documented in restoring a GitLab Helm chart installation.

Restoring only one or a few projects or groups from a backup

Although the Rake task used to restore a GitLab instance doesn't support restoring a single project or group, you can use a workaround by restoring your backup to a separate, temporary GitLab instance, and then export your project or group from there:

1. Install a new GitLab instance at the same version as the backed-up instance from which you want to restore.
2. Restore the backup into this new instance, then export your project or group. Be sure to read the Important Notes on either export feature's documentation to understand what is and isn't exported.
3. After the export is complete, go to the old instance and then import it.
4. After importing the projects or groups that you wanted is complete, you may delete the new, temporary GitLab instance.

A feature request to provide direct restore of individual projects or groups is being discussed in issue #17517.

Alternative backup strategies

If your GitLab server contains a lot of Git repository data, you may find the GitLab backup script to be too slow. In this case you can consider using file system snapshots as part of your backup strategy.

Example: Amazon EBS

A GitLab server using Omnibus GitLab hosted on Amazon AWS. An EBS drive containing an ext4 file system is mounted at /var/opt/gitlab. In this case you could make an application backup by taking an EBS snapshot. The backup includes all repositories, uploads and PostgreSQL data.

Example: LVM snapshots + rsync

A GitLab server using Omnibus GitLab, with an LVM logical volume mounted at /var/opt/gitlab. Replicating the /var/opt/gitlab directory using rsync would not be reliable because too many files would change while rsync is running. Instead of rsync-ing /var/opt/gitlab, we create a temporary LVM snapshot, which we mount as a read-only file system at /mnt/gitlab_backup. Now we can have a longer running rsync job which creates a consistent replica on the remote server. The replica includes all repositories, uploads and PostgreSQL data.

If you're running GitLab on a virtualized server, you can possibly also create VM snapshots of the entire GitLab server. It's not uncommon however for a VM snapshot to require you to power down the server, which limits this solution's practical use.

Backup and restore for installations using PgBouncer

Do NOT backup or restore GitLab through a PgBouncer connection. These tasks must bypass PgBouncer and connect directly to the PostgreSQL primary database node, or they cause a GitLab outage.

When the GitLab backup or restore task is used with PgBouncer, the following error message is shown:

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::UndefinedTable

Each time the GitLab backup runs, GitLab will start generating 500 errors and errors about missing tables will be logged by PostgreSQL:

ERROR: relation "tablename" does not exist at character 123

This happens because the task uses pg_dump, which sets a null search path and explicitly includes the schema in every SQL query to address CVE-2018-1058.

Since connections are reused with PgBouncer in transaction pooling mode, PostgreSQL fails to search the default public schema. As a result, this clearing of the search path causes tables and columns to appear missing.

Bypassing PgBouncer

There are two ways to fix this:

1. Use environment variables to override the database settings for the backup task.
2. Reconfigure a node to connect directly to the PostgreSQL primary database node.

Environment variable overrides

By default, GitLab uses the database configuration stored in a configuration file (database.yml). However, you can override the database settings for the backup and restore task by setting environment variables that are prefixed with GITLAB_BACKUP_:

• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGHOST
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGUSER
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGPORT
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGPASSWORD
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLMODE
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLKEY
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLCERT
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLROOTCERT
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLCRL
• GITLAB_BACKUP_PGSSLCOMPRESSION

For example, to override the database host and port to use 192.168.1.10 and port 5432 with the Omnibus package:

sudo GITLAB_BACKUP_PGHOST=192.168.1.10 GITLAB_BACKUP_PGPORT=5432 /opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-backup create

See the PostgreSQL documentation for more details on what these parameters do.

Additional notes

This documentation is for GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition. We back up GitLab.com and ensure your data is secure. You can't, however, use these methods to export or back up your data yourself from GitLab.com.

Issues are stored in the database, and can't be stored in Git itself.

To migrate your repositories from one server to another with an up-to-date version of GitLab, use the import Rake task to do a mass import of the repository. If you do an import Rake task rather than a backup restore, you get all of your repositories, but no other data.

Troubleshooting

The following are possible problems you might encounter, along with potential solutions.

Restoring database backup using Omnibus packages outputs warnings

If you're using backup restore procedures, you may encounter the following warning messages:

psql:/var/opt/gitlab/backups/db/database.sql:22: ERROR:  must be owner of extension plpgsql
psql:/var/opt/gitlab/backups/db/database.sql:2931: WARNING:  no privileges could be revoked for "public" (two occurrences)
psql:/var/opt/gitlab/backups/db/database.sql:2933: WARNING:  no privileges were granted for "public" (two occurrences)

Be advised that the backup is successfully restored in spite of these warning messages.

The Rake task runs this as the gitlab user, which doesn't have superuser access to the database. When restore is initiated, it also runs as the gitlab user, but it also tries to alter the objects it doesn't have access to. Those objects have no influence on the database backup or restore, but display a warning message.

For more information, see:

• PostgreSQL issue tracker:

  • Not being a superuser.
  • Having different owners.

• Stack Overflow: Resulting errors.

When the secrets file is lost

If you didn't back up the secrets file, you must complete several steps to get GitLab working properly again.

The secrets file is responsible for storing the encryption key for the columns that contain required, sensitive information. If the key is lost, GitLab can't decrypt those columns, preventing access to the following items:

• CI/CD variables
• Kubernetes / GCP integration
• Custom Pages domains
• Project error tracking
• Runner authentication
• Project mirroring
• Web hooks

In cases like CI/CD variables and runner authentication, you can experience unexpected behaviors, such as:

• Stuck jobs.
• 500 errors.

In this case, you must reset all the tokens for CI/CD variables and runner authentication, which is described in more detail in the following sections. After resetting the tokens, you should be able to visit your project and the jobs begin running again.

Use the information in the following sections at your own risk.

Verify that all values can be decrypted

You can determine if your database contains values that can't be decrypted by using the Secrets Doctor Rake task.

Take a backup

You must directly modify GitLab data to work around your lost secrets file.

WARNING: Be sure to create a full database backup before attempting any changes.

Disable user two-factor authentication (2FA)

Users with 2FA enabled can't sign in to GitLab. In that case, you must disable 2FA for everyone, after which users must reactivate 2FA.

Reset CI/CD variables

1. Enter the database console:

   For Omnibus GitLab packages:

   sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

   For installations from source:

   sudo -u git -H bundle exec rails dbconsole -e production

2. Examine the ci_group_variables and ci_variables tables:

   SELECT * FROM public."ci_group_variables";
   SELECT * FROM public."ci_variables";

   These are the variables that you need to delete.

3. Drop the table:

   DELETE FROM ci_group_variables;
   DELETE FROM ci_variables;

You may need to reconfigure or restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Reset runner registration tokens

1. Enter the database console:

   For Omnibus GitLab packages:

   sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

   For installations from source:

   sudo -u git -H bundle exec rails dbconsole -e production

2. Clear all tokens for projects, groups, and the entire instance:

   WARNING: The final UPDATE operation stops the runners from being able to pick up new jobs. You must register new runners.

   -- Clear project tokens
   UPDATE projects SET runners_token = null, runners_token_encrypted = null;
   -- Clear group tokens
   UPDATE namespaces SET runners_token = null, runners_token_encrypted = null;
   -- Clear instance tokens
   UPDATE application_settings SET runners_registration_token_encrypted = null;
   UPDATE application_settings SET encrypted_ci_jwt_signing_key = null;
   -- Clear runner tokens
   UPDATE ci_runners SET token = null, token_encrypted = null;

Reset pending pipeline jobs

1. Enter the database console:

   For Omnibus GitLab packages:

   sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

   For installations from source:

   sudo -u git -H bundle exec rails dbconsole -e production

2. Clear all the tokens for pending jobs:

   -- Clear build tokens
   UPDATE ci_builds SET token = null, token_encrypted = null;

A similar strategy can be employed for the remaining features. By removing the data that can't be decrypted, GitLab can be returned to operation, and the lost data can be manually replaced.

Fix project integrations

If you've lost your secrets, the projects' integrations settings pages are probably displaying 500 error messages.

The fix is to truncate the web_hooks table:

1. Enter the database console:

   For Omnibus GitLab packages:

   sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

   For installations from source:

   sudo -u git -H bundle exec rails dbconsole -e production

2. Truncate the table:

   -- truncate web_hooks table
   TRUNCATE web_hooks CASCADE;

Container Registry push failures after restoring from a backup

If you use the Container Registry, pushes to the registry may fail after restoring your backup on an Omnibus GitLab instance after restoring the registry data.

These failures mention permission issues in the registry logs, similar to:

level=error
msg="response completed with error"
err.code=unknown
err.detail="filesystem: mkdir /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/registry/docker/registry/v2/repositories/...: permission denied"
err.message="unknown error"

This issue is caused by the restore running as the unprivileged user git, which is unable to assign the correct ownership to the registry files during the restore process (issue 62759).

To get your registry working again:

sudo chown -R registry:registry /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/registry/docker

If you changed the default file system location for the registry, run chown against your custom location, instead of /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/registry/docker.

Backup fails to complete with Gzip error

When running the backup, you may receive a Gzip error message:

sudo /opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-backup create
...
Dumping ...
...
gzip: stdout: Input/output error

Backup failed

If this happens, examine the following:

• Confirm there is sufficient disk space for the Gzip operation.
• If NFS is being used, check if the mount option timeout is set. The default is 600, and changing this to smaller values results in this error.