Moving Gitlab and Gitolite server to another machine

Solution 1:

I am constantly doing this by hourly crontab job for faster local deployment. (which creates an exact copy of the original server, serves as a read-only mirror, personally I call it a puppet machine).

All you need to do is:

1. backup/restore mysql data (tools: mysqldump / mysql < backup.sql.txt)
2. copy all gitlab www to new machine (scp, rsync)
3. copy all gitolite dir to new machine (rsync)

You can always run the following command to test if the puppet is running successful.

bundle exec rake gitlab:app:status RAILS_ENV=production

Some detailed procedure:

I have mime setup done by using ubuntu 12.04 gitolite apt-get install, rest by official guide and I have also made myself some notes:

• reminder at: https://github.com/c2h2/gitlabhq_install/blob/master/aio.sh
• automated backup script: https://github.com/c2h2/gitlabhq_install/blob/master/gitlab_backup.rb

SSH private/public keys are needed for automated (passwordless) rsync/scp process, if you don't understand plz read http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html

All you need to setup is some cron jobs after original machine is working: this is online mirror too. (you don't need to restart any webserver/machine)

crontab on mirror machine:

58 * * * * rsync -zav root@my_remote_server.com:/home/git /home
11 * * * * rsync -zav root@my_remote_server.com:/root/mysql_hourly_dump.txt /root
15 * * * * mysql -u root -p"secure password" gitlabhq_production < mysql_hourly_dump.txt
20 * * * * rsync -zav --delete my_remote_server.com:/www/ /www

crontab on server:

7 * * * * mysqldump -p"secure password" gitlabhq_production -u root > /root/mysql_hourly_dump.txt

Solution 2:

Moving gitolite seems easy:

• you need to make sure the public keys it references are still in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys of the new home (so you mainly need to copy that file over)
• And you need to move the repositories, .gitolite and .gitolite.rc files (check the paths in that last one)

The "users" are only declared in the gitolite file and the gitlab database.

GitLab should be reinstalled (because of all the gems it is using, which could be using on fixed path based on the first installation) and its database updated/replaced with the one from the Ubuntu server (either through a file copy, or through an sql export/import).