Migrating gitlab to omnibus from source, debian to rpm, apache to nginx, and mysql to postgresql

I've had my own gitlab installation for a few years.  I built it long before it was easy to build and maintain.  Originally I installed gitlab from source, on ubuntu, using mysql and apache.  It's a real PITA to maintain given that omnibus installations are so much easier to maintain.  (omnibus is geek-speek for "all-in-one").  In this post I'll cover the steps I did to pull off upgrading this to omnibus, switching to postgresql from mysql, apache to nginx, and ubuntu to centos (which is my new Linux standard).  

I hope I'm not polluting the google cache with this info but I couldn't find a good guide for migrating gitlab:

  • from ubuntu to centos (debian to rpm).  No particular reason for this, just trying to make my migration even more complicated.  
  • from mysql to postgres (the latter is the preferred database for omnibus gitlab installations)
  • from gitlab source to omnibus gitlab (also the "new" preferred method).  My installation was ancient and was built from source and was a hobgob of crap that was in dire need of cleanup.  I had some components installed as the gitlab user, some as the git user...it was a mess.  
  • from apache to nginx.  The latter is the preferred web server.  It always was.  For some reason when I installed from source years ago I decided to use apache.  Don't remember why, probably just nginx ignorance.  

I really wanted to clean all of this up and get gitlab going correctly.  At this point I was stuck on 7.14 because 8.x migrations required nginx and google go and I couldn't seem to get that working with apache.  Again, ignorance...but this was just one more reason to do things correclty.  

# install your new gitlab server with the same installation as your source server.  In my case 7.14.  Probably want to use omnibus.  Make sure it's working to your specifications

# on source server...

#remove existing backups

rm -rf /home/git/gitlab/tmp/backups/*

cd /home/git/gitlab
sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create RAILS_ENV=production
 
Now we need to migrate mysql dump file format to postgres.  There's an excellent tutorial for that here:  https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/update/mysql_to_postgresql.md
 
Once that is done copy the file from source to destination.  I use scp:  
 
scp tmp/backups/* root@destination:/var/opt/gitlab/backups
 
# the remainder of the tasks are performed on the destination server
sudo su -
sudo gitlab-ctl stop unicorn
sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq
cd /var/opt/gitlab/backups
sudo -u git -H bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:restore RAILS_ENV=production
chmod a+rx <file>
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore
sudo gitlab-ctl start
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:satellites:create
sudo chmod -R ug+rwX,o-rwx /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories
sudo chmod -R ug-s /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories
find /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories -type d -print0 | sudo xargs -0 chmod g+s
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check SANITIZE=true
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:check 
 
And that is it.  I tested, saw no issues, shutdown the old server and pointed my DNS to the new server.  So far...so good.  
 
Seems like an easy process, I can assure you it took me almost a day.  I hope someone finds this post useful.
 

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