Documentation

Getting Started

All GitHost instances are fully configured out of the box. We handle upgrading your instances, as well as making sure they are always available when you need them.

Below you will find information helpful when setting up you instances on GitHost, and links to relevant GitLab documentaion where needed.

GitLab CE

Setting up a GitLab CE instance is quick and simple. Navigate to the "New Instance" menu located in the top right menu and select "GitLab CE".

On the New Instance page you can select the plan size for your instance and the subdomain (or domain name). Once you've entered these details we'll provision an instnace running the latest version of GitLab CE for you.

We recommend the "Developer" plan for teams smaller than 10 people, the "Startup" plan for teams smaller than 25 people, and the "Business" plan for team sizes larger than 25 people. This ensures there are enough physical resources available on the instance to handle the workload of more users and projects.

Once your instance is created you can navigate to it and login with the default username and password:

Default username: root

Default password: 5iveL!fe

GitLab CI Master

A GitLab CI master instance allows you to coordinate builds to runners. It links to any GitLab CE install, including GitHost powered instances, GitLab Cloud, or any self installed GitLab install.

When creating a GitLab CI master instance you can have it automatically configured to connect with any CE instance you'd like. You can also choose to use a githost.io subdomain, or use your own custom domain.

Please checkout the GitLab CI docs for more information.

GitLab CI Runner

A GitLab CI runner instance receives builds sent from the CI master coordinator and executes the jobs, reporting the status back to the master instance. This allows you to have multiple runners so builds and jobs can be executed in parallel, or split up for faster processing.

In order to create a build runner you must first have a CI master instance running. Build runners can only be linked to GitHost CI master instances. Once you have a CI master, navigate to the details page for your master instance, then select the "CI Runners" tab located at the top. Notice the slider to the right. This can be used to dynamically spin up and destroy runner instances. You can have anywhere from 0 to 20 runner instances per master at once, and can scale them according to your workload.

Runner instances are charged by the minute, so you can spin up a large amount to process many builds and then destroy them after, for minimal costs.

Runner instances are based on an Ubuntu 12.04 amd64 master image and all jobs are executed as the gitlab_ci_runneruser. This user has passwordless sudo privileges so you can use sudo apt-getto install any software needed to run your jobs. We recommend placing any bootstrap code (like installing mysql, rbenv, or code compilers) into a shell script included in your code repo and called from the build script for the job. The bootstrap script should first check if the needed software is installed, and only install it if missing. This will speed up build times, as you only need to install services like mysql if the runner is new and the it's the first build.

Please checkout the GitLab CI docs for more information.