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 projects from one server to another is through a backup and restore.

WARNING: GitLab doesn't back up items that aren't stored on 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 back up 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
Terraform states (introduced in GitLab 14.7)
Container Registry images
GitLab Pages content
Packages (introduced in GitLab 14.7)
Snippets
Group wikis

Backups do not include:

Mattermost data
Redis (and thus Sidekiq jobs)

WARNING: GitLab does not back up any configuration files (/etc/gitlab), TLS keys and certificates, or system files. You are highly advised to read about storing configuration files.

WARNING: The backup command requires additional parameters when your installation is using PgBouncer, for either performance reasons or when using it with a Patroni cluster.

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 toolbox pod. For more details, see the charts backup documentation.

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 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 back up:

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 Back up the secrets instructions.

You may also want to back up any TLS keys and certificates (/etc/gitlab/ssl, /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs), and your SSH host keys to avoid man-in-the-middle attack warnings if you have to perform a full machine restore.

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)
terraform_state (Terraform states)
registry (Container Registry images)
pages (Pages content)
repositories (Git repositories data)
packages (Packages)

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.

Concurrent restore introduced in GitLab 14.3

When using multiple repository storages, repositories can be backed up or restored 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 the number of logical CPUs (in GitLab 14.1 and earlier, 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 2 (in GitLab 14.1 and earlier, 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.

Using Amazon S3

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

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'

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

S3 Encrypted Buckets

Introduced in GitLab 14.3.

AWS supports these modes for server side encryption:

Amazon S3-Managed Keys (SSE-S3)
Customer Master Keys (CMKs) Stored in AWS Key Management Service (SSE-KMS)
Customer-Provided Keys (SSE-C)

Use your mode of choice with GitLab. Each mode has similar, but slightly different, configuration methods.

SSE-S3

To enable SSE-S3, in the backup storage options set the server_side_encryption field to AES256. For example, in Omnibus GitLab:

gitlab_rails['backup_upload_storage_options'] = {
  'server_side_encryption' => 'AES256'
}

SSE-KMS

To enable SSE-KMS, you'll need the KMS key via its Amazon Resource Name (ARN) in the arn:aws:kms:region:acct-id:key/key-id format. Under the backup_upload_storage_options config setting, set:

server_side_encryption to aws:kms.
server_side_encryption_kms_key_id to the ARN of the key.

For example, in Omnibus GitLab:

gitlab_rails['backup_upload_storage_options'] = {
  'server_side_encryption' => 'aws:kms',
  'server_side_encryption_kms_key_id' => 'arn:aws:<YOUR KMS KEY ID>:'
}

SSE-C

SSE-C requires you to set these encryption options:

backup_encryption: AES256.
backup_encryption_key: Unencoded, 32-byte (256 bits) key. The upload fails if this isn't exactly 32 bytes.

For example, in Omnibus GitLab:

gitlab_rails['backup_encryption'] = 'AES256'
gitlab_rails['backup_encryption_key'] = '<YOUR 32-BYTE KEY HERE>'

If the key contains binary characters and cannot be encoded in UTF-8, instead, specify the key with the GITLAB_BACKUP_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable. For example:

gitlab_rails['env'] = { 'GITLAB_BACKUP_ENCRYPTION_KEY' => "\xDE\xAD\xBE\xEF" * 8 }

Digital Ocean Spaces

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

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'

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:

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'
      # Specifies Amazon S3 storage class to use for backups, this is optional
      # storage_class: 'STANDARD'
      #
      # Turns on AWS Server-Side Encryption with Amazon Customer-Provided Encryption Keys for backups, this is optional
      #   'encryption' must be set in order for this to have any effect.
      #   'encryption_key' should be set to the 256-bit encryption key for Amazon S3 to use to encrypt or decrypt.
      #   To avoid storing the key on disk, the key can also be specified via the `GITLAB_BACKUP_ENCRYPTION_KEY`  your data.
      # encryption: 'AES256'
      # encryption_key: '<key>'
      #
      #
      # Turns on AWS Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3-Managed keys (optional)
      # https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/serv-side-encryption.html
      # For SSE-S3, set 'server_side_encryption' to 'AES256'.
      # For SS3-KMS, set 'server_side_encryption' to 'aws:kms'. Set
      # 'server_side_encryption_kms_key_id' to the ARN of customer master key.
      # storage_options:
      #   server_side_encryption: 'aws:kms'
      #   server_side_encryption_kms_key_id: 'arn:aws:kms:YOUR-KEY-ID-HERE'

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:

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

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

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'

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

For installations from source:

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'

Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect

Using Azure Blob storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.4.

For Omnibus GitLab packages:

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>'

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

For installations from source:

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>'

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:

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'

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

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'

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:

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

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

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

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

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

Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Configuring cron to make daily backups

WARNING: The following cron jobs do not back up 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:

Edit the crontab for the root user:
```
sudo su -
crontab -e
```
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:

Edit the crontab for the git user:
```
sudo -u git crontab -e
```

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:

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

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

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

For installations from source:

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

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

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 your previous /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb (for Omnibus packages) or /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml (for installations from source) and any TLS keys, certificates (/etc/gitlab/ssl, /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs), 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.

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 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.

WARNING: The restore command requires additional parameters when your installation is using PgBouncer, for either performance reasons or when using it with a Patroni cluster.

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

For added assurance, you can perform an integrity check on the uploaded files:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:artifacts:check
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:lfs:check
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:uploads:check

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 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. NOTE: "_gitlab_backup.tar" is omitted from the name
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.

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

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

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:

Install a new GitLab instance at the same version as the backed-up instance from which you want to restore.
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.
After the export is complete, go to the old instance and then import it.
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 instance contains a lot of Git repository data, you may find the GitLab backup script to be too slow. If your GitLab instance has a lot of forked projects, the regular backup task also duplicates the Git data for all of them. In these cases, consider using file system snapshots as part of your backup strategy.

Example: Amazon Elastic Block Store (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: Logical Volume Manager (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.

Back up repository data separately

First, ensure you back up existing GitLab data while skipping repositories:

# for Omnibus GitLab package installations
sudo gitlab-backup create SKIP=repositories

# for installations from source:
sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create SKIP=repositories RAILS_ENV=production

For manually backing up the Git repository data on disk, there are multiple possible strategies:

Use snapshots, such as the previous examples of Amazon EBS drive snapshots, or LVM snapshots + rsync.
Use GitLab Geo and rely on the repository data on a Geo secondary site.
Prevent writes and copy the Git repository data.
Create an online backup by marking repositories as read-only (experimental).

Prevent writes and copy the Git repository data

Git repositories must be copied in a consistent way. They should not be copied during concurrent write operations, as this can lead to inconsistencies or corruption issues. For more details, issue #270422 has a longer discussion explaining the potential problems.

To prevent writes to the Git repository data, there are two possible approaches:

Use maintenance mode (PREMIUM SELF) to place GitLab in a read-only state.
Create explicit downtime by stopping all Gitaly services before backing up the repositories:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl stop gitaly
# execute git data copy step
sudo gitlab-ctl start gitaly
```

You can copy Git repository data using any method, as long as writes are prevented on the data being copied (to prevent inconsistencies and corruption issues). In order of preference and safety, the recommended methods are:

Use rsync with archive-mode, delete, and checksum options, for example:

rsync -aR --delete --checksum source destination # be extra safe with the order as it will delete existing data if inverted

Use a tar pipe to copy the entire repository's directory to another server or location.
Use sftp, scp, cp, or any other copying method.

Online backup through marking repositories as read-only (experimental)

One way of backing up repositories without requiring instance-wide downtime is to programmatically mark projects as read-only while copying the underlying data.

There are a few possible downsides to this:

Repositories are read-only for a period of time that scales with the size of the repository.
Backups take a longer time to complete due to marking each project as read-only, potentially leading to inconsistencies. For example, a possible date discrepancy between the last data available for the first project that gets backed up compared to the last project that gets backed up.
Fork networks should be entirely read-only while the projects inside get backed up to prevent potential changes to the pool repository.

There is an experimental script that attempts to automate this process in the Geo team Runbooks project.

Back up and restore for installations using PgBouncer

Do NOT back up 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:

Use environment variables to override the database settings for the backup task.
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.

Migrate to a new server

You can use GitLab backup and restore to migrate your instance to a new server. This section outlines a typical procedure for a GitLab deployment running on a single server. If you're running GitLab Geo, an alternative option is Geo disaster recovery for planned failover.

WARNING: Avoid uncoordinated data processing by both the new and old servers, where multiple servers could connect concurrently and process the same data. For example, when using incoming email, if both GitLab instances are processing email at the same time, then both instances will end up missing some data. This type of problem can occur with other services as well, such as a non-packaged database, a non-packaged Redis instance, or non-packaged Sidekiq.

Prerequisites:

Some time before your migration, consider notifying your users of upcoming scheduled maintenance with a broadcast message banner.
Ensure your backups are complete and current. Create a complete system-level backup, or take a snapshot of all servers involved in the migration, in case destructive commands (like rm) are run incorrectly.

Prepare the new server

To prepare the new server:

Copy the SSH host keys from the old server to avoid man-in-the-middle attack warnings.
Install and configure GitLab except incoming email:
1. Install GitLab.
2. Configure by copying /etc/gitlab files from the old server to the new server, and update as necessary. Read the Omnibus configuration backup and restore instructions for more detail.
3. If applicable, disable incoming email.
4. Block new CI/CD jobs from starting upon initial startup after the backup and restore. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and set the following:
```
nginx['custom_gitlab_server_config'] = "location /api/v4/jobs/request {\n deny all;\n return 503;\n}\n"
```
5. Reconfigure GitLab:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```
Stop GitLab to avoid any potential unnecessary and unintentional data processing:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl stop
```

Configure the new server to allow receiving the Redis database and GitLab backup files:

sudo rm -f /var/opt/gitlab/redis/dump.rdb
sudo chown <your-linux-username> /var/opt/gitlab/redis
sudo mkdir /var/opt/gitlab/backups
sudo chown <your-linux-username> /var/opt/gitlab/backups

Prepare and transfer content from the old server

Ensure you have an up-to-date system-level backup or snapshot of the old server.
Enable maintenance mode (PREMIUM SELF), if supported by your GitLab edition.

Block new CI/CD jobs from starting:

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, and set the following:

nginx['custom_gitlab_server_config'] = "location /api/v4/jobs/request {\n deny all;\n return 503;\n}\n"

Reconfigure GitLab:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```

Disable periodic background jobs:
1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Monitoring > Background Jobs.
3. Under the Sidekiq dashboard, select Cron tab and then Disable All.
Wait for the currently running CI/CD jobs to finish, or accept that jobs that have not completed may be lost. To view jobs currently running, on the left sidebar, select Overviews > Jobs, and then select Running.
Wait for Sidekiq jobs to finish:
1. On the left sidebar, select Monitoring > Background Jobs.
2. Under the Sidekiq dashboard, select Queues and then Live Poll. Wait for Busy and Enqueued to drop to 0. These queues contain work that has been submitted by your users; shutting down before these jobs complete may cause the work to be lost. Make note of the numbers shown in the Sidekiq dashboard for post-migration verification.

Flush the Redis database to disk, and stop GitLab other than the services needed for migration:

sudo /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/redis-cli -s /var/opt/gitlab/redis/redis.socket save && sudo gitlab-ctl stop && sudo gitlab-ctl start postgresql

Create a GitLab backup:
```
sudo gitlab-backup create
```

Disable the following GitLab services and prevent unintentional restarts by adding the following to the bottom of /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

alertmanager['enable'] = false
gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
gitlab_pages['enable'] = false
gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
grafana['enable'] = false
logrotate['enable'] = false
gitlab_rails['incoming_email_enabled'] = false
nginx['enable'] = false
node_exporter['enable'] = false
postgres_exporter['enable'] = false
postgresql['enable'] = false
prometheus['enable'] = false
puma['enable'] = false
redis['enable'] = false
redis_exporter['enable'] = false
registry['enable'] = false
sidekiq['enable'] = false

Reconfigure GitLab:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```
Verify everything is stopped, and confirm no services are running:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl status
```

Transfer the Redis database and GitLab backups to the new server:

sudo scp /var/opt/gitlab/redis/dump.rdb <your-linux-username>@new-server:/var/opt/gitlab/redis
sudo scp /var/opt/gitlab/backups/your-backup.tar <your-linux-username>@new-server:/var/opt/gitlab/backups

Restore data on the new server

Restore appropriate file system permissions:

sudo chown gitlab-redis /var/opt/gitlab/redis
sudo chown gitlab-redis:gitlab-redis /var/opt/gitlab/redis/dump.rdb
sudo chown git:root /var/opt/gitlab/backups
sudo chown git:git /var/opt/gitlab/backups/your-backup.tar

Restore the GitLab backup.
Verify that the Redis database restored correctly:
1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Monitoring > Background Jobs.
3. Under the Sidekiq dashboard, verify that the numbers match with what was shown on the old server.
4. While still under the Sidekiq dashboard, select Cron and then Enable All to re-enable periodic background jobs.
Test that read-only operations on the GitLab instance work as expected. For example, browse through project repository files, merge requests, and issues.
Disable Maintenance Mode (PREMIUM SELF), if previously enabled.
Test that the GitLab instance is working as expected.
If applicable, re-enable incoming email and test it is working as expected.
Update your DNS or load balancer to point at the new server.

Unblock new CI/CD jobs from starting by removing the custom NGINX config you added previously:

# The following line must be removed
nginx['custom_gitlab_server_config'] = "location /api/v4/jobs/request {\n deny all;\n return 503;\n}\n"

Reconfigure GitLab:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```
Remove the scheduled maintenance broadcast message banner.

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:

ERROR: must be owner of extension pg_trgm
ERROR: must be owner of extension btree_gist
ERROR: must be owner of extension plpgsql
WARNING:  no privileges could be revoked for "public" (two occurrences)
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:

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 a 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

Enter the database console:

For Omnibus GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

For Omnibus GitLab 14.2 and later:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole --database main

For installations from source, GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

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

For installations from source, GitLab 14.2 and later:

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

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.

Drop the table:

DELETE FROM ci_group_variables;
DELETE FROM ci_variables;

If you know the specific group or project from which you wish to delete variables, you can include a WHERE statement to specify that in your DELETE:
```
DELETE FROM ci_group_variables WHERE group_id = <GROUPID>;
DELETE FROM ci_variables WHERE project_id = <PROJECTID>;
```

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

Reset runner registration tokens

Enter the database console:

For Omnibus GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

For Omnibus GitLab 14.2 and later:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole --database main

For installations from source, GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

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

For installations from source, GitLab 14.2 and later:

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

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;
-- Clear key used for JWT authentication
-- This may break the $CI_JWT_TOKEN job variable:
-- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/325965
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

Enter the database console:

For Omnibus GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

For Omnibus GitLab 14.2 and later:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole --database main

For installations from source, GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

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

For installations from source, GitLab 14.2 and later:

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

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:

Enter the database console:

For Omnibus GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole

For Omnibus GitLab 14.2 and later:

sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole --database main

For installations from source, GitLab 14.1 and earlier:

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

For installations from source, GitLab 14.2 and later:

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

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.

`gitaly-backup` for repository backup and restore

Introduced in GitLab 14.2.

Deployed behind a feature flag, enabled by default.

Recommended for production use.

For GitLab self-managed instances, GitLab administrators can opt to disable it.

There can be risks when disabling released features. Refer to this feature's version history for more details.

The gitaly-backup binary is used by the backup Rake task to create and restore repository backups from Gitaly. gitaly-backup replaces the previous backup method that directly calls RPCs on Gitaly from GitLab.

The backup Rake task must be able to find this executable. In most cases, you don't need to change the path to the binary as it should work fine with the default path /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/gitaly-backup. If you have a specific reason to change the path, it can be configured in Omnibus GitLab packages:

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

gitlab_rails['backup_gitaly_backup_path'] = '/path/to/gitaly-backup'

Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect

Disable or enable `gitaly-backup`

gitaly-backup is under development but ready for production use. It is deployed behind a feature flag that is enabled by default. GitLab administrators with access to the GitLab Rails console can opt to disable it.

To disable it:

Feature.disable(:gitaly_backup)

To enable it:

Feature.enable(:gitaly_backup)

Back up and restore GitLab (FREE SELF)

Requirements

Backup timestamp

Back up GitLab

Storing configuration files

Backup options

Backup strategy option

Backup filename

Confirm archive can be transferred

Excluding specific directories from the backup

Skipping tar creation

Disabling prompts during restore

Back up Git repositories concurrently

Uploading backups to a remote (cloud) storage

Using Amazon S3

S3 Encrypted Buckets

SSE-S3

SSE-KMS

SSE-C

Digital Ocean Spaces

Other S3 Providers

Using Google Cloud Storage

Using Azure Blob storage

Specifying a custom directory for backups

Uploading to locally mounted shares

Backup archive permissions

Configuring cron to make daily backups

Limit backup lifetime for local files (prune old backups)

Restore GitLab

Restore prerequisites

Restore for Omnibus GitLab installations

Restore for Docker image and GitLab Helm chart installations

Restore for installation from source

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

Alternative backup strategies

Back up repository data separately

Prevent writes and copy the Git repository data

Online backup through marking repositories as read-only (experimental)

Back up and restore for installations using PgBouncer

Bypassing PgBouncer

Environment variable overrides

Migrate to a new server

Prepare the new server

Prepare and transfer content from the old server

Restore data on the new server

Additional notes

Troubleshooting

Restoring database backup using Omnibus packages outputs warnings

When the secrets file is lost

Verify that all values can be decrypted

Take a backup

Disable user two-factor authentication (2FA)

Reset CI/CD variables

Reset runner registration tokens

Reset pending pipeline jobs

Fix project integrations

Container Registry push failures after restoring from a backup

Backup fails to complete with Gzip error

gitaly-backup for repository backup and restore

Disable or enable gitaly-backup

`gitaly-backup` for repository backup and restore

Disable or enable `gitaly-backup`