How to upgrade Gitlab 5.0 to 5.1 on CentOS 6 or RHEL6

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These are instructions on how to upgrade Gitlab 5.0 to 5.1 on CentOS 6.

This guide assumes you already followed my How to install Gitlab 5.0 on CentOS 6 or RHEL6 post.

1. As the root user stop the Gitlab service

   [root@localhost ~] service gitlab stop
   # Wait a few moments before continuing. Shutting down Gitlab took 30sec-1min on my system.

    

2. Switch to the ‘sa_gitlab’ user account and move into your gitlab directory

   [root@localhost ~] su - sa_gitlab
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] cd gitlab

    

3. Update Gitlab source from 5.0 to 5.1

   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] git fetch
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] git checkout 5-1-stable

    

4. Configure Puma which is replacing Unicorn

   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] cp config/puma.rb.example config/puma.rb
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] vim config/puma.rb
   
   # -------- Make the following edits --------
   
     application_path = '/data/apps/sa_gitlab/gitlab'
     bind 'tcp://127.0.0.1:65527'
   
   # -------- Save and close the file --------

    

5. Redeploy Gitlab (I think that’s what this does anyway)

   # You may not need to do this. I ran into some errors during my upgrade but my ISP was having problems at the time. It won't hurt to run these commands either way.
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] gem install sanitize -v '2.0.3'
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] gem install jquery-rails -v '2.1.3'
   
   # These commands you DO need to run
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] bundle install --without development test postgres --deployment
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] bundle exec rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] bundle exec rake migrate_merge_requests RAILS_ENV=production
   # When prompted choose 'Yes'

    

6. Switch back to root and update the Gitlab start-up script

   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] exit
   
   [root@localhost ~] mv /etc/init.d/gitlab /etc/init.d/gitlab.50
   [root@localhost ~] curl --output /etc/init.d/gitlab https://raw.github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-recipes/5-1-stable/init.d/gitlab
   [root@localhost ~] vim /etc/init.d/gitlab
   
   # -------- Make the following edits --------
   # The lines with a + are lines you need to add to the script
   
     APP_ROOT="/data/apps/sa_gitlab/gitlab"
   + APP_USER="sa_gitlab"
   
   # Search/Replace "sudo -u git" with "sudo -u $APP_USER"
   
   # -------- Save and close the file --------
   
   [root@localhost ~] chmod +x /etc/init.d/gitlab

    

7. Start up Gitlab and then restart Apache if your using mod_proxy

   [root@localhost ~] service gitlab start
   [root@localhost ~] service httpd restart

    

8. Update Gitlab Shell

   [root@localhost ~] su - sa_gitlab
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] cd gitlab-shell
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] git pull
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] bin/install
   [sa_gitlab@localhost~] bin/check

All done! Hopefully this went slightly more smoothly for you then it did me. I noticed the first time loading Gitlab after the upgrade as a bit slow but things were nice and quick after that.

Updated April 26th, 2013 – Added instructions for updating Gitlab shell.

Updated May 22nd, 2013 – Wrote an article on How to go from 5.1 to 5.2