Administrator documentation (CORE ONLY)

Learn how to administer your self-managed GitLab instance.

GitLab has two product distributions available through different subscriptions:

You can install either GitLab CE or GitLab EE. However, the features you have access to depend on your chosen subscription.

GitLab Community Edition installations have access only to Core features.

Non-administrator users can't access GitLab administration tools and settings.

GitLab.com is administered by GitLab, Inc., and only GitLab team members have access to its administration tools and settings. Users of GitLab.com should instead refer to the User documentation for GitLab configuration and usage documentation.

Installing and maintaining GitLab

Learn how to install, configure, update, and maintain your GitLab instance.

Installing GitLab

Configuring GitLab

Customizing GitLab's appearance

  • Header logo: Change the logo on all pages and email headers.
  • Favicon: Change the default favicon to your own logo.
  • Branded login page: Customize the login page with your own logo, title, and description.
  • "New Project" page: Customize the text to be displayed on the page that opens whenever your users create a new project.
  • Additional custom email text: Add additional custom text to emails sent from GitLab. (PREMIUM ONLY)

Maintaining GitLab

  • Rake tasks: Perform various tasks for maintenance, backups, automatic webhooks setup, and more.
  • Operations: Keeping GitLab up and running (clean up Redis sessions, moving repositories, Sidekiq MemoryKiller, Puma).
  • Restart GitLab: Learn how to restart GitLab and its components.
  • Invalidate Markdown cache: Invalidate any cached Markdown.
  • Instance review: Request a free review of your GitLab instance.

Updating GitLab

Upgrading or downgrading GitLab

GitLab platform integrations

  • Mattermost: Integrate with Mattermost, an open source, private cloud workplace for web messaging.
  • PlantUML: Create simple diagrams in AsciiDoc and Markdown documents created in snippets, wikis, and repositories.
  • Web terminals: Provide terminal access to your applications deployed to Kubernetes from within GitLab's CI/CD environments.

User settings and permissions

Project settings

Package Registry administration

  • Container Registry: Configure Container Registry with GitLab.
  • Package Registry: Enable GitLab to act as an NPM Registry and a Maven Repository.
  • Dependency Proxy: Configure the Dependency Proxy, a local proxy for frequently used upstream images/packages.

Repository settings

Continuous Integration settings

Snippet settings

Wiki settings

Git configuration options

Monitoring GitLab

Performance Monitoring

Analytics

  • Pseudonymizer: Export data from GitLab's database to CSV files in a secure way. (ULTIMATE)

Troubleshooting

Support Team Docs

The GitLab Support Team has collected a lot of information about troubleshooting GitLab instances. These documents are normally used by the Support Team itself, or by customers with direct guidance from a Support Team member. GitLab administrators may find the information useful for troubleshooting, but if you are experiencing trouble with your GitLab instance, you should check your support options before referring to these documents.

CAUTION: Warning: Using the commands listed in the documentation below could result in data loss or other damage to a GitLab instance, and should only be used by experienced administrators who are aware of the risks.