- Restoring the secrets
- Restoring the backup file
- Enable Kubernetes related settings
- Restart the pods
- (Optional) Reset the root user’s password
- Additional Information
Restoring a GitLab installation
To obtain a backup tarball of an existing GitLab instance that used other installation methods like an Omnibus GitLab package or Omnibus GitLab Helm chart, follow the instructions given in documentation
Note: If you are restoring a backup taken from another instance, you must migrate your existing instance to using object storage before taking the backup. See issue 646
It is recommended that you restore a backup to the same version of GitLab on which it was created.
GitLab backup restores are taken by running the backup-utility
command on the task-runner
pod provided in the chart.
Before running the restore for the first time, you should ensure the task-runner is properly configured for access to object storage
The backup utility provided by GitLab Helm chart supports restoring a tarball from any of the following locations
- The
gitlab-backups
bucket in the object storage service associated to the instance. This is the default scenario. - A public URL that can be accessed from the pod.
- A local file that you can copy to the
task-runner
pod usingkubectl cp
Restoring the secrets
Restore the rails secrets
The GitLab chart expects rails secrets to be provided as a Kubernetes Secret with content in YAML. Create a local file with the following content:
production:
db_key_base: <your key base value>
secret_key_base: <your secret key base value>
otp_key_base: <your otp key base value>
openid_connect_signing_key: <your openid signing key>
ci_jwt_signing_key: <your ci jwt signing key>
The values should be replaced with matching values from your backup instances rails secrets. For omnibus install they were found in the /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json
file, and for other install types you should have a secrets.yml
file that contains them.
Once you have the secrets created as a local YAML file:
-
Find the object name for the rails secrets
kubectl get secrets | grep rails-secret
-
Delete the existing secret
kubectl delete secret <rails-secret-name>
-
Create the new secret using the same name as the old, and passing in your local YAML file
kubectl create secret generic <rails-secret-name> --from-file=secrets.yml=<local-yaml-filepath>
Restart the pods
In order to use the new secrets, the webservice
, sidekiq
and task-runner
pods need to be restarted. The safest way to restart those pods is to run:
kubectl delete pods -lapp=sidekiq,release=<helm release name>
kubectl delete pods -lapp=webservice,release=<helm release name>
kubectl delete pods -lapp=task-runner,release=<helm release name>
Restoring the backup file
The steps for restoring a GitLab installation are
-
Make sure you have a running GitLab instance by deploying the charts. Ensure the
task-runner
pod is enabled and running by executing the following commandkubectl get pods -lrelease=RELEASE_NAME,app=task-runner
- Get the tarball ready in any of the above locations. Make sure it is named in the
<timestamp>_<version>_gitlab_backup.tar
format. -
Run the backup utility to restore the tarball
kubectl exec <task-runner pod name> -it -- backup-utility --restore -t <timestamp>_<version>
Here,
<timestamp>_<version>
is from the name of the tarball stored ingitlab-backups
bucket. In case you want to provide a public URL, use the following commandkubectl exec <task-runner pod name> -it -- backup-utility --restore -f <URL>
You can provide a local path as a URL as long as it’s in the format:
file://<path>
- This process will take time depending on the size of the tarball.
- The restoration process will erase the existing contents of database, move existing repositories to temporary locations and extract the contents of the tarball. Repositories will be moved to their corresponding locations on the disk and other data, like artifacts, uploads, LFS etc. will be uploaded to corresponding buckets in Object Storage.
During restoration, the backup tarball needs to be extracted to disk. This means the
task-runner
pod should have disk of necessary size available.
Restore the runner registration token
After restoring, the included runner will not be able to register to the instance because it no longer has the correct registration token. Follow these troubleshooting steps to get it updated.
Enable Kubernetes related settings
If the restored backup was not from an existing installation of the chart, you will also need to enable some Kubernetes specific features after the restore. Such as incremental CI job logging.
-
Find your
task-runner
pod by executing the following commandkubectl get pods -lrelease=RELEASE_NAME,app=task-runner
-
Run the instance setup script to enable the necessary features
kubectl exec <task-runner pod name> -it -- /scripts/custom-instance-setup
Restart the pods
In order to use the new changes, the webservice
and sidekiq
pods need to be restarted. The safest way to restart those pods is to run:
kubectl delete pods -lapp=sidekiq,release=<helm release name>
kubectl delete pods -lapp=webservice,release=<helm release name>
(Optional) Reset the root user’s password
The restoration process does not update the gitlab-initial-root-password
secret with the value from backup. For logging in as root
, use the original password included in the backup. In the case that the password is no longer accessible, follow the steps below to reset it.
-
Attach to the webservice pod by executing the command
kubectl exec <webservice pod name> -it bash
-
Run the following command to reset the password of
root
user. Replace#{password}
with a password of your choice/srv/gitlab/bin/rails runner "user = User.first; user.password='#{password}'; user.password_confirmation='#{password}'; user.save!"