Environment Variables
GitLab exposes certain environment variables which can be used to override their defaults values.
People usually configure GitLab via /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb for Omnibus
installations, or gitlab.yml for installations from source.
Below you will find the supported environment variables which you can use to override certain values.
Supported environment variables
| Variable | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD |
string | Sets the password for the root user on installation |
GITLAB_HOST |
string | The full URL of the GitLab server (including http:// or https://) |
RAILS_ENV |
string | The Rails environment; can be one of production, development, staging or test
|
DATABASE_URL |
string | The database URL; is of the form: postgresql://localhost/blog_development
|
GITLAB_EMAIL_FROM |
string | The e-mail address used in the "From" field in e-mails sent by GitLab |
GITLAB_EMAIL_DISPLAY_NAME |
string | The name used in the "From" field in e-mails sent by GitLab |
GITLAB_EMAIL_REPLY_TO |
string | The e-mail address used in the "Reply-To" field in e-mails sent by GitLab |
GITLAB_UNICORN_MEMORY_MIN |
integer | The minimum memory threshold (in bytes) for the Unicorn worker killer |
GITLAB_UNICORN_MEMORY_MAX |
integer | The maximum memory threshold (in bytes) for the Unicorn worker killer |
Complete database variables
The recommended way of specifying your database connection information is to set
the DATABASE_URL environment variable. This variable only holds connection
information (adapter, database, username, password, host and port),
but not behavior information (encoding, pool). If you don't want to use
DATABASE_URL and/or want to set database behavior information, you will have
to either:
- copy our template file:
cp config/database.yml.env config/database.yml, or - set a value for some
GITLAB_DATABASE_XXXvariables
The list of GITLAB_DATABASE_XXX variables that you can set is:
| Variable | Default value | Overridden by DATABASE_URL? |
|---|---|---|
GITLAB_DATABASE_ADAPTER |
postgresql (for MySQL use mysql2) |
Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_DATABASE |
gitlab_#{ENV['RAILS_ENV'] |
Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_USERNAME |
root |
Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_PASSWORD |
None | Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_HOST |
localhost |
Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_PORT |
5432 |
Yes |
GITLAB_DATABASE_ENCODING |
unicode |
No |
GITLAB_DATABASE_POOL |
10 |
No |
Adding more variables
We welcome merge requests to make more settings configurable via variables.
Please make changes in the config/initializers/1_settings.rb file and stick
to the naming scheme GITLAB_#{name in 1_settings.rb in upper case}.
Omnibus configuration
It's possible to preconfigure the GitLab docker image by adding the environment
variable GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG to the docker run command.
For more information see the 'preconfigure-docker-container' section in the Omnibus documentation.