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unixandria
Asked: 2020-08-18 17:26:13 +0800 CST

Self host gitlab using caddy

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I'm trying to install and host gitlab, but it requires and pulls in Nginx. Which would be fine, except I use Caddy and Caddy doesn't play well with Nginx and has to be disabled for Nginx to even start.

I like Caddy a lot, especially the built in file server, so just switching completely to Nginx isn't an option. I also have no interest in trying to do firewall redirects to try to use Nginx on a nonstandard port.

Is there any way to use gitlab without nginx, eg Caddy? There's no official documentation and the last thing I tried from an online forum completely broke my gitlab install and only pertained to Apache which I'm not using

My system is a dedicated cloud server running Ubuntu 20.04.

ubuntu gitlab caddy

2 Answers

  1. I finally figured it out.

    GitLab doesn't listen on a port but a Unix socket. Luckily we can configure Caddy to reverse proxy to the socket in the Caddyfile like so:

    git.example.com {
     reverse_proxy * unix//var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-workhorse/socket
}

    Make sure caddy user is in git and gitlab-www groups and vice versa.

    In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb make sure these are configured as such:

    nginx['enable'] = false
web_server['external_users'] = ['caddy']
web_server['username'] = 'gitlab-www'
web_server['group'] = 'gitlab-www' 
web_server['uid'] = nil
web_server['gid'] = nil
web_server['shell'] = '/bin/false' 
web_server['home'] = '/var/opt/gitlab/nginx'

    Then do

    sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo systemctl restart caddy (or restart Caddy manually if you don't use systemd)

    I've only tested with the official caddy and GitLab-EE packages on Ubuntu 20.04, and don't configure Caddy via API, but this should work for standard installs of GitLab.

    • 4
  2. Best Answer

    The answer from unixandria is correct for when it's from. Things have changed a little since then.

    There's now this official section on GitLab Docs.

    Also, GitLab 13.5 changed the location of the unix socket, so the Caddyfile should have this now:

    git.example.com {
    reverse_proxy unix//var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-workhorse/sockets/socket
}
    • 2