GitLab® Community Edition, or GitLab CE, is an open-source web-based Git repository featuring
a wiki and issue tracking. This article describes how to install GitLab CE and configure
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on an Ubuntu® 18.04 LTS cloud server.

Prerequisites:

• A server with at least 8GB of ram
• A domain name pointed at your server

Install Dependencies

There are a few dependencies that you must install before you install GitLab.

First, at the command line, update your apt cache with the following command:

sudo apt update

Then, install the ca-certificates, curl, openssh-server, and postfix packages:

sudo apt install ca-certificates curl openssh-server postfix

During the postfix installation, select Internet Site. On the next page, enter your domain name.

Install GitLab CE

After you finish installing the dependencies, perform the following steps:

1. Change directory to /tmp:

   cd /tmp

2. Run the repository script from gitlab.com:

   wget https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ce/script.deb.sh

3. Install the repository by using the following command:

   sudo bash script.deb.sh

4. Then, install GitLab CE:

   sudo apt install gitlab-ce

Configure GitLab

After the command to install GitLab CE, you should see a warning about setting your domain name. While
fixing that, go ahead and enable SSL with letsencrypt. Perform the following steps:

1. Open the GitLab configuration file with a text editor. This example uses nano.

   sudo nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

2. Find the external_url field and update it to match your domain name, changing http to https.
   It should look similar to the following example:

   external_url 'https://example.com'
   

3. Look for the letsencrypt[‘contact_emails’] field. If there is ever a problem with your SSL
   certificate, the system alerts the email addresses listed in this field. It should look similar
   to the following example:

   letsencrypt['contact_emails'] = ['[email protected]']
   

4. Save the file and exit.

5. Reconfigure GitLab to have it read the new configuration file. This part may take a few minutes.

   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

After the reconfiguration finishes, navigate to your domain name in your web browser to start using GitLab CE.