GitLab System Administration - Hands-on Lab: Backup and Restore GitLab

This Hands-On Guide walks you through backing up a GitLab instance on a virtual machine, and restoring the GitLab instance to a previous state.

Estimated time to complete: 30 minutes

Objectives

The objective of this lab is to demonstrate how to back up a GitLab instance on a virtual machine, and restore said instance to a previous state. For more information about backing up/restoring a GitLab instance, click here.

Task A. Configure backup settings

Open an SSH session on your GitLab instance server.
Search for the location of backup settings in gitlab.rb.
```
sudo grep -n backup_path /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
```
Note the line number for the setting gitlab_rails['backup_path'].
Create a new directory to hold GitLab backups.
```
sudo mkdir /tmp/backups
```
Edit gitlab.rb to change the backup path. Replace “606” with the line number noted in step 3.
```
sudo sed -i '606s@\/var\/opt\/gitlab\/backups@\/tmp\/backups@' /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
sudo sed -i '606s/#//' /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
```
Here, we are using the sed command to do text replacements inside the gitlab.rb file without having to use a text editor like vim.
Reconfigure to apply the changes.
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```

Task B. Backup the GitLab instance

Take a full backup of the GitLab instance.
```
sudo gitlab-backup create
```
After the backup completes, go to the backup location and inspect the backup file.
```
sudo ls /tmp/backups
sudo tar -tvf /tmp/backups/<backup_filename>
```

Task C. Make some changes to GitLab settings

Sign into your GitLab instance with a web browser and open your sidebar. In the bottom left corner, click Admin area.
In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
Expand Account and limit and change the maximum attachment size to 500 MiB, and the default project limits to 10000.
Click Save changes to save the changes.
Refresh the page and verify your changes were applied.

Task D. Restore from backup

Return to the SSH session on your GitLab instance server.
Move your backup file to the location GitLab requires for performing the restore.
```
sudo cp /tmp/backups/<backup_filename> /var/opt/gitlab/backups/
```
Ensure the backup file has correct permissions for performing the restore.
```
sudo chown git:git /var/opt/gitlab/backups/<backup_filename>
```

Stop the puma and sidekiq services before restoring.

sudo gitlab-ctl stop puma
sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq
sudo gitlab-ctl status

Restore from backup. Replace <backup_timestamp> with the portion of the backup filename up to and including -ee. For example, if the backup file name starts with 1663207732_2022_09_15_15.3.3-ee, the command will be sudo gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=1663207732_2022_09_15_15.3.3-ee.
```
sudo gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=<backup_timestamp>
```
Type yes when prompted during the restore operation. You may see what looks like error messages. That is normal.
When prompted to rebuild the authorized_keys file, type yes.

Restart sidekiq and puma services.

sudo gitlab-ctl start sidekiq
sudo gitlab-ctl start puma
sudo gitlab-ctl status

Wait up to 5 minutes before refreshing GitLab in your web browser. Verify that the maximum attachment size and the default project limits you changed revert back to the defaults (i.e. when the backup was taken).

Lab Guide Complete

You have completed this lab exercise. You can view the other lab guides for this course.

Suggestions?

If you’d like to suggest changes to the GitLab System Admin Basics Hands-on Guide, please submit them via merge request.

Last modified July 9, 2024: Fix links and spelling (e30f31b6)

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