Dockerized Gitlab - Configure SMTP

Related Posts

• GitLab Documentation Index

Steps

Use the following command to edit your gitlab configuration file from within the container:

sudo docker exec -it gitlab vi /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb

If your container isn't running or you cant run it, you can use sudo vim gitlab/config/gitlab.rb.

You will find a commented out section as shown below:

...
################################
# GitLab email server settings #
################################
# see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/blob/master/doc/settings/smtp.md#smtp-settings
# Use smtp instead of sendmail/postfix.

# gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true
# gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "smtp.server"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_port'] = 465
# gitlab_rails['smtp_user_name'] = "smtp user"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_password'] = "smtp password"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_domain'] = "example.com"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_authentication'] = "login"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_enable_starttls_auto'] = true
# gitlab_rails['smtp_tls'] = false
# gitlab_rails['smtp_openssl_verify_mode'] = 'none' # Can be: 'none', 'peer', 'client_once', 'fail_if_no_peer_cert', see http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionMailer/Base.html
# gitlab_rails['smtp_ca_path'] = "/etc/ssl/certs"
# gitlab_rails['smtp_ca_file'] = "/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt"

...

Uncomment them and fill in the values. However, you might find it easier just to copy/paste in from the online examples. I found that when configuring it for AWS SES, I needed to just paste in the following:

SES

For AWS SES, you want the following:

gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true
gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "email-smtp.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com"
gitlab_rails['smtp_port'] = 587
gitlab_rails['smtp_user_name'] = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
gitlab_rails['smtp_password'] = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
gitlab_rails['smtp_domain'] = "email-smtp.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com"
gitlab_rails['smtp_authentication'] = "login"
gitlab_rails['smtp_enable_starttls_auto'] = true

# If your SMTP server does not like the default 'From: gitlab@localhost' you
# can change the 'From' with this setting.
gitlab_rails['gitlab_email_from'] = 'support@mycompanydomain.org'
gitlab_rails['gitlab_email_reply_to'] = 'noreply@mycompanydomain.org'

Gmail

For gmail, you want to create an app specific password and use it in the chunk below:

gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true
gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "smtp.gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['smtp_port'] = 587
gitlab_rails['smtp_user_name'] = "xxxxxxxx@gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['smtp_password'] = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
gitlab_rails['smtp_domain'] = "smtp.gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['smtp_authentication'] = "login"
gitlab_rails['smtp_enable_starttls_auto'] = true
gitlab_rails['smtp_tls'] = false
gitlab_rails['smtp_pool'] = false

Restart the Container

Now restart the docker container and gitlab will reconfigure iteself

The instructions say to use:

sudo docker restart gitlab

However I found that I had to basically stop/remove and then use my start-gitlab script.

References

• GitLab Docs - Docker images
• GitLab Docs - SMTP settings