It took me a couple of days to get everything sorted out, so I wanted to share the steps it took to get it all working. This is how to install Nginx for a website and get it working with an existing gitlab repo (that uses a bundled version of Nginx). MY gitlab repo is on a subdomain of my website called 'repos'.
Open a terminal and install Nginx:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx
Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:
Find your user name, which you will need when configuring gitlab:
In my case this was 'nginx':
user nginx;
Add this line inside the http{ } block :
$include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
Example:
http{
include etc/nginx/mime.types;
include etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
(more stuff...)
}
Edit configuration file /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:
Change this line:
external_url 'GENERATED_EXTERNAL_URL'
To:
external_url 'http://www.example.com/repos' // (whatever your server name is)
Uncomment and change this line:
nginx['enable'] = true
To:
nginx['enable'] = false
Uncomment and change this line:
web_server['external_users'] = []
To:
web_server['external_users'] = ['nginx'] // or whatever your nginx user is called, sometimes it's 'www-data'
Nginx needs a configuration file for gitlab:
On the GitLab recipes repository: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-recipes/tree/master/web-server/nginx find 'gitlab-omnibus-nginx.conf'.
Put that file in the folder /etc/nginx/sites-enabled (you may need to create the sites-enabled folder)
Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/gitlab-omnibus-nginx.conf:
Change this line:
server_name YOUR_SERVER_FQDN
To:
server_name www.example.com/repos // (or whatever your server name is)
You will need to change the port that gitlab is on so that the website and git server both work.
Change this line:
listen 0.0.0.0:80 default_server;
To:
listen 0.0.0.0:8081;
Change this line:
listen [::]:80 default_server;
To:
listen [::]:8081;
Edit configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:
Make this the default server:
listen 80 default_server;
server_name localhost;
Add a second location for the gitlab repo and use proxy_pass to point to the port you put Gitlab on.
I put my Gitlab in the sub-directory 'repos'. The number 127.0.0.1 means localhost (the same computer):
location / {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
location /repos/ {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081;
}
Run these commands in the terminal:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo service nginx restart
Your webserver and gitlab should now both be working and accessible online.
Nginx will default to /usr/share/nginx/html when a user visits your webserver. There is a default .html file there. That is where you can put files for your website.
