How to run GitLab through Docker on Raspberry Pi 4b on Ubuntu Server?

Question

While trying to start GitLab in a Docker container I am experiencing some issues. The command does works on other pc's. The command consists of:

sudo docker run --detach \
  --hostname 127.0.0.1 \
  --publish 443:443 --publish 80:80 --publish 22:22 \
  --name gitlab \
  --restart always \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/config:/etc/gitlab \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/logs:/var/log/gitlab \
  --volume $GITLAB_HOME/data:/var/opt/gitlab \
  gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest

Next, I inspect how gitlab is starting up with command:

sudo docker logs -f gitlab

Which displays the following error:

standard_init_linux.go:219: exec user process caused: exec format error

According to perara in this link that might be caused to a difference in the architecture of the Raspberry Pi 4b (4gb) and the architecture that is used by gitlab-ce:latest. So I tried various other architectures by including the following platform arguments (one per run):

--platform /linux/arm/v7
--platform /linux/amd64
--platform /linux/arm64
--platform /linux/armhf

which yielded error:

docker: Error response from deamon: image with reference gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest was found but does not match the specified platform wanted linux/arm64, actual: linux/amd64.

So it seems like I am not finding the right docker image of Gitlab for the right architecture of the Raspberry Pi model 4b with 4Gb. I ran these commands on the Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS 32bit armhf OS.

So I would like to ask, how could I run GitLab through docker on Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi 4b (4gb)? E.g. should I use a different Ubuntu Server OS version, and/or specify a different platform argument, and/or get a different source than gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest?

Answer 1

Sadly at the time of this writing GitLab doesn't seem to officially support GitLab-CE on ARM with docker. Their only documented procedure for running CE on ARM is with Debian Buster and GitLabs official package repository.
https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/rpi.html

There is a seemingly popular 3rd party build of CE for Docker ARM but it's only for arm64, so you'd need to run a 64bit distro.
https://hub.docker.com/r/yrzr/gitlab-ce-arm64v8
https://git.yrzr.tk/docker/gitlab-ce-arm64

To switch to using the 3rd party images you'll need to run a 64bit distro and should only need to replace

gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest

with

yrzr/gitlab-ce-arm64v8:latest

in your run command

Answer 2

For those who don't want to rely on third party pre-built images, here's a little project that allows building your own GitLab image for Raspberry Pi 4, that is using official GitLab Dockerfile and debian package for RPI: https://github.com/xaxa06/gitlab-rpi-docker

Answer 3

Here a 2024 answer:

Currently, GitLab has not yet released an official Docker image for ARM, so you’ll still need to rely on third-party solutions. I have a Raspberry Pi 5 where I also wanted to host GitLab (CE), and I found this repository:
https://github.com/feskol/gitlab-arm64

So instead of using:

image: gitlab/gitlab-ce:17.6.1-ce.0

You need to use:

image: feskol/gitlab:17.6.1-ce

Note:
This Docker image is only for arm64. I'm using the Raspberry Pi OS (arm 64-Bit) and it's working fine.