Gitlab in a subdirectory with apache and passenger

Question

I'm attempting to set up gitlab so that it is accessible through a subdirectory of an existing apache server, example.com/gitlab, for example. I am trying to use passenger, as this seems to be the easiest to set up, but other solutions would also be acceptable. Using a separate virtual host for gitlab is unfortunately not an option for me.

My Setup

In setting this up, I have followed the gitlab setup guide and the passenger documentation.

I believe the most relevant parts of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf are the following:

DocumentRoot "/home/.www"

# gitlab config
RackBaseURI /gitlab
<Directory "/home/.www/gitlab">
    Options -MultiViews
</Directory>

The DocumentRoot of apache contains a symlink to the gitlab public directory:

$ ls -l /home/.www
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  http    23 Jul 29 12:35 gitlab -> ../gitlab/gitlab/public

Passenger was installed using the passenger-install-apache2-module script, and the config lines output by the script are included in the apache config.

I have played with the relative_url_root in config/gitlab.yml; that did not have any effect (judging from the the comments in the file, this mechanism seems to be discouraged or deprecated---it would be nice to avoid it).

Results

When accessing example.com/gitlab, I get the following output (a plain text document):

Not Found: /

Apache's logs indicate that passenger has started, but that at least favicon.ico is being requested from the document root, when it should be be requested from the subdirectory as /gitlab/favicon.ico:

[ 2013-07-29 14:14:12.1029 2037/7f3502e1e740 agents/HelperAgent/Main.cpp:597 ]: PassengerHelperAgent online, listening at unix:/tmp/passenger.1.0.2033/generation-0/request
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:12.1150 2043/7fa24dbf3740 agents/LoggingAgent/Main.cpp:330 ]: PassengerLoggingAgent online, listening at unix:/tmp/passenger.1.0.2033/generation-0/logging
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:12.1154 2034/7ff20a0cb740 agents/Watchdog/Main.cpp:635 ]: All Phusion Passenger agents started!
[Mon Jul 29 14:14:12 2013] [notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ...
[Mon Jul 29 14:14:12 2013] [notice] Digest: done
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:13.0297 2057/7f5380ee3740 agents/Watchdog/Main.cpp:452 ]: Options: { 'analytics_log_user' => 'nobody', 'default_group' => 'nobody', 'default_python' => 'python', 'default_ruby' => '/usr/bin/ruby', 'default_user' => 'nobody', 'log_level' => '0', 'max_instances_per_app' => '0', 'max_pool_size' => '6', 'passenger_root' => '/usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/gems/passenger-4.0.10', 'pool_idle_time' => '300', 'temp_dir' => '/tmp', 'union_station_gateway_address' => 'gateway.unionstationapp.com', 'union_station_gateway_port' => '443', 'user_switching' => 'true', 'web_server_pid' => '2055', 'web_server_type' => 'apache', 'web_server_worker_gid' => '33', 'web_server_worker_uid' => '33' }
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:13.0367 2061/7f92eefef740 agents/HelperAgent/Main.cpp:597 ]: PassengerHelperAgent online, listening at unix:/tmp/passenger.1.0.2055/generation-0/request
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:13.0485 2067/7f4cc5205740 agents/LoggingAgent/Main.cpp:330 ]: PassengerLoggingAgent online, listening at unix:/tmp/passenger.1.0.2055/generation-0/logging
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:13.0490 2057/7f5380ee3740 agents/Watchdog/Main.cpp:635 ]: All Phusion Passenger agents started!
[Mon Jul 29 14:14:13 2013] [notice] Apache/2.2.25 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.25 OpenSSL/1.0.1e DAV/2 Phusion_Passenger/4.0.10 configured -- resuming normal operations
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:16.8354 2061/7f92eef2a700 Pool2/Spawner.h:738 ]: [App 2096 stdout] 
[ 2013-07-29 14:14:24.8814 2061/7f92eef2a700 Pool2/SmartSpawner.h:301 ]: Preloader for /home/.www/../gitlab/gitlab started on PID 2096, listening on unix:/tmp/passenger.1.0.2055/generation-0/backends/preloader.2096
[Mon Jul 29 14:14:25 2013] [error] [client 129.241.220.221] File does not exist: /home/.www/favicon.ico

It seems to me that it should not be necessary to start any puma server or similar, so I have not run any bundle exec rake ... commands to start anything rails-related when generating the logs above (I have tried that but I'm not including the output here as it seems identical to me).

Does anyone see what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

I don't think that Passenger is the easiest way to configure Apache for GitLab. Using a local reverse proxy is actually more simple.

The lastest version of GitLab (6.0) is using Unicorn, but it almost the same with Puma.

In your config/unicorn.rb file, comment listen directive and add:

listen "127.0.0.1:9242"

In your Apache configuration, you can then add

ProxyPass         /gitlab http://127.0.0.1:9242
ProxyPassReverse  /gitlab http://127.0.0.1:9242

Restart Apache and GitLab, and it should work.