GitLab 12 specific changes

note
When upgrading to a new major version, remember to first check for background migrations.

Prometheus 1.x Removal

Prometheus 1.x was deprecated in GitLab 11.4, and Prometheus 2.8.1 was installed by default on new installations. Users updating from older versions of GitLab could manually upgrade Prometheus data using the gitlab-ctl prometheus-upgrade command provided. You can view current Prometheus version in use from the instances Prometheus /status page.

With GitLab 12.0, support for Prometheus 1.x is completely removed, and as part of the upgrade process, Prometheus binaries will be updated to version 2.8.1. Existing data from Prometheus 1.x installation WILL NOT be migrated as part of this automatic upgrade, and users who wish to retain that data should manually upgrade Prometheus version before upgrading to GitLab 12.0

For users who use /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure file to skip automatic migrations and reconfigures during upgrade, Prometheus upgrade will also be skipped. However, since the package no longer contains Prometheus 1.x binary, the Prometheus service will be non-functional due to the mismatch between binary version and data directory. Users will have to manually run sudo gitlab-ctl prometheus-upgrade command to get Prometheus running again.

Please note that gitlab-ctl prometheus-upgrade command automatically reconfigures your GitLab instance, and will cause database migrations to run. So, if you are on an HA instance, run this command only as the last step, after performing all database related actions.

Removal of support for /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-migrations file

Before GitLab 10.6, the file /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-migrations was used to prevent automatic reconfigure (and thus automatic database migrations) as part of upgrade. This file had been deprecated in favor of /etc/gitlab/skip-auto-reconfigure since GitLab 10.6, and in 12.0 the support is removed completely. Upgrade process will no longer take skip-auto-migrations file into consideration.

Deprecation of TLS v1.1

With the release of GitLab 12, TLS v1.1 has been fully deprecated. This mitigates numerous issues including, but not limited to, Heartbleed and makes GitLab compliant out of the box with the PCI DSS 3.1 standard.

Learn more about why TLS v1.1 is being deprecated in our blog.

Upgrade to PostgreSQL 10

caution
If you are running a Geo installation using PostgreSQL 9.6.x, please upgrade to GitLab 12.4 or newer. Older versions were affected by an issue that could cause automatic upgrades of the PostgreSQL database to fail on the secondary. This issue is now fixed.

PostgreSQL will automatically be upgraded to 10.x unless specifically opted out during the upgrade. To opt out you must execute the following before performing the upgrade of GitLab. 

sudo touch /etc/gitlab/disable-postgresql-upgrade

Further details and procedures for upgrading a GitLab HA cluster can be found in the Database Settings notes.

12.1

If you were using monitoring related node attributes like node['gitlab']['prometheus'] or node['gitlab']['alertmanager'] in your gitlab.rb file for configuring other settings, they are now under monitoring key and should be renamed. The replacements are as follows 

# Existing usage in gitlab.rb => Replacement

* node['gitlab']['prometheus'] => node['monitoring']['prometheus']
* node['gitlab']['alertmanager'] => node['monitoring']['alertmanager']
* node['gitlab']['redis-exporter'] => node['monitoring']['redis-exporter']
* node['gitlab']['node-exporter'] => node['monitoring']['node-exporter']
* node['gitlab']['postgres-exporter'] => node['monitoring']['postgres-exporter']
* node['gitlab']['gitlab-monitor'] => node['monitoring']['gitlab-monitor']
* node['gitlab']['grafana'] => node['monitoring']['grafana']

Also, it is recommended to use the actual values in gitlab.rb instead of referring node values to avoid breakage when these attributes are moved in the backend.

12.2

The default formula for calculating the number of Unicorn worker processes has been updated to increase the number of workers by 50% per CPU. This will increase the CPU and memory utilization slightly. This has been done to improve performance by reducing the amount of request queuing.

12.3

To prevent confusion with the broader GitLab Monitor feature set, the GitLab Monitor tool has been renamed to GitLab Exporter. As a result, usage of gitlab_monitor[*] keys in gitlab.rb file has been deprecated in favor of gitlab_exporter[*] ones.

The deprecated settings will be removed in GitLab 13.0. They will continue to work till then, but warnings will be displayed at the end of reconfigure run. Since upgrades to 13.0 will be prevented if removed settings are found in gitlab.rb, users who are currently using those settings are advised to switch to gitlab_exporter[*] ones at the earliest.

12.7

The Redis version packaged with Omnibus GitLab has been updated to Redis 5.0.7. You will need to restart Redis after the upgrade so that the new version will be active. To restart Redis, run sudo gitlab-ctl restart redis. If your instance has Redis HA with Sentinel, follow the upgrade steps documented in Update GitLab installed with the Omnibus GitLab package to avoid downtime.

Unicorn memory limits should also be adjusted to the following values: 

unicorn['worker_memory_limit_min'] = "1024 * 1 << 20"
unicorn['worker_memory_limit_max'] = "1280 * 1 << 20"

See our documentation on unicorn-worker-killer for more information.

12.8

PostgreSQL 11.7 is being shipped with the package in addition to 10.12 and 9.6.17. Both fresh installs and upgrades will still continue to use 10.12, but users can manually upgrade to 11.7 following the upgrade docs.

12.9

Puma is now available as an alternative web server to Unicorn. If you are migrating from Unicorn, refer to converting Unicorn settings to Puma to make sure your web server settings carry over correctly.

12.10

note
PostgreSQL 9.6 and PostgreSQL 10 will be removed from the Omnibus package in the next release: GitLab 13.0. The minimum supported PostgreSQL version will be 11. In order to upgrade to GitLab 13.0, you will need to be upgrading from 12.10, and already using a PostgreSQL 11 database. For more information, please see which PostgreSQL versions are shipped with an Omnibus install.

PostgreSQL will automatically be upgraded to 11.x except for the following cases:

  • you are running the database in high_availability using repmgr.
  • your database nodes are part of GitLab Geo configuration.
  • you have specifically opted out using the /etc/gitlab/disable-postgresql-upgrade file outlined below.

To opt out you must execute the following before performing the upgrade of GitLab. 

sudo touch /etc/gitlab/disable-postgresql-upgrade

Further details and procedures for upgrading PostgreSQL after install if not completed automatically can be found in the Database Settings notes.