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Docker compose with custom certificates

This page describes how to setup a self-managed instance of R2Devops using Docker-compose.

💻 Requirements​

The system requires a Linux server. It runs in 🐳 Docker containers using a docker-compose configuration. Specifications:

  • OS: Ubuntu or Debian

  • Hardware

    • CPU x86_64/amd64 with at least 2 cores
    • 4 GB RAM
    • 30 GB of storage for R2Devops

  • Network

    • Users must be able to reach the R2Devops server on TCP ports 80 and 443
    • The R2Devops server must be able to access internet
    • The R2Devops server must be able to communicate with GitLab instance
    • The installation process required to have a write access to the DNS Zone to setup R2Devops domain
    • If the server is not reachable from internet or if you want to use your own certificate for HTTPS, you need to be able to generate certificate during the installation process for R2Devops domain

  • Installed software

    • Git
    • Docker
    • Note: both compose plugin (docker compose) and docker-compose CLI are working. The first one is installed by default with Docker

🛠️ Installation​

📥 Setup your environment​

  1. Clone the repository on your server 
    git clone https://github.com/r2devops/self-managed.git r2devops
    cd r2devops
  2. Create your configuration files 
    cp .env.example .env
    cp .docker/r2devops/config.json.example .docker/r2devops/config.json

📋 Organization​

In your .env file:

  1. Add your organization

    • If you use a SaaS version of GitLab (like gitlab.com): add the path of your organization top-level group in ORGANIZATION variable
    .env
    ORGANIZATION="<top-level-group-name>"
    • Else, let the ORGANIZATION variable empty
    .env
    ORGANIZATION=""

  2. (Optional) Add your license

    License key

    If you do not have a license key, you can let the variable LICENSE empty (value: ""). Your R2Devops instance will be limited to 5 projects.

    Add your license key (provided by R2Devops): edit the .env file by updating value of LICENSE variable:

    .env
    LICENSE="<license-key>"

📄 Domain name​

  1. Edit the .env file by updating value of DOMAIN_NAME, and JOBS_GITLAB_URL variables

    .env
    DOMAIN_NAME="r2devops.<domain_name>"
    JOBS_GITLAB_URL="https://<url_of_your_gitlab_instance>"
    Example with domain name 'mydomain.com'
    DOMAIN_NAME="r2devops.mydomain.com"
    JOBS_GITLAB_URL="https://gitlab.mydomain.com"

  2. Edit the .docker/r2devops/config.json file by updating apiUrl, apiUrlIdentities and gitLabApiUrl parameters

    warning

    Set allowExternalQueries to false if you want to prevent R2Devops from initiating queries to sources other than backend and GitLab.

    {
        "appTitle": "R2Devops",
        "apiUrl": "https://r2devops.<domain_name>/api",
        "gitLabApiUrl": "https://<gitlab_intance_domain>",
        "selfHosted": true,
        "docUrl": "https://docs.r2devops.io",
        "debug": false,
        "allowExternalQueries": true
    }
    Example with domain name 'mydomain.com'
    {
        "apiUrl": "https://r2devops.mydomain.com/api",
        "gitLabApiUrl": "https://gitlab.mydomain.com",
    }

  3. Create DNS record

    • Name: r2devops.<domain_name>
    • Type: A
    • Content: <your-server-public-ip>

🦊 GitLab OIDC​

R2Devops uses GitLab as an OAuth2 provider to authenticate users. Let's see how to connect it to your GitLab instance.

Create an application​

Choose a group on your GitLab instance to create an application. It can be any group. Open the chosen group in GitLab interface and navigate through Settings > Applications:

Profile_Menu

Then, create an application with the following information :

  • Name: R2Devops self-managed
  • Redirect URI : https://r2devops.<domain_name>/api/auth/gitlab/callback
  • Confidential: true (let the box checked)
  • Scopes: api

Click on Save Application and you should see the following screen:

Application

Update the configuration​

In .env file:

  1. Copy/paste the Application ID and the Secret from the application you just created
    .env
    GITLAB_OAUTH2_CLIENT_ID="<application-id>"
    GITLAB_OAUTH2_CLIENT_SECRET="<application-secret>"

🔐 Generate secrets​

Generate random secrets for all components:

sed -i."" "s/REPLACE_ME_BY_SECRET_KEY/$(openssl rand -hex 32)/g" .env
sed -i."" "s/REPLACE_ME_BY_JOBS_DB_PASSWORD/$(openssl rand -hex 16)/g" .env
sed -i."" "s/REPLACE_ME_BY_JOBS_REDIS_PASSWORD/$(openssl rand -hex 16)/g" .env
sed -i."" "s/REPLACE_ME_BY_S3_SECRET_KEY/$(openssl rand -hex 16)/g" .env

📄 Configure certificate​

  1. Generate your certificate

    info

    • If you already have certificate or if you want to generate it using your own process, you can directly go to step 2 - This step requires certbot

    certbot certonly --manual --preferred-challenges dns -d r2devops.<your_domain>
    # Add DNS entry to solve DNS challenge

  2. Copy the fullchain and the private key

    info

    If you generated your certificates using certbot, they are located in /etc/letsencrypt/live/

    Replace path in commands below by the path of your certificate:

    cp path_to_r2devops_cert_fullchain .docker/traefik/certs/r2devops_fullchain.pem
    cp path_to_r2devops_cert_privkey .docker/traefik/certs/r2devops_privkey.pem

📋 (Optional) Add your custom CA​

If your GitLab instance and/or R2Devops are using a TLS certificate signed with your own Certificate authority (CA):

  • Add the CA certificate file in .docker/ca-certificates

🚀 Launch the application​

Congratulations

You have successfully installed R2Devops on your server 🎉

Now you can launch the application and ensure everything works as expected.

Run the following command to start the system:

docker compose -f compose.custom_certs.yml up -d
Reconfigure

If you need to reconfigure some files and relaunch the application, after your updates you can simply run the command again to do so.

docker compose -f compose.custom_certs.yml up -d
Not the same behavior

Did you encounter a problem during the installation process ? See the troubleshooting section.

⏫ Update​

Follow these steps to update your self-managed instance to a new version:

  1. Navigate to the location of your self-managed git repository
  2. Update it 
    git pull
  3. Open the .env.example file and copy the values of FRONTEND_IMAGE_TAG and BACKEND_IMAGE_TAG variables
  4. Edit the .env file by updating values of FRONTEND_IMAGE_TAG and BACKEND_IMAGE_TAG variables with the values previously copied
    .env
    FRONTEND_IMAGE_TAG="<new frontend version>"
    BACKEND_IMAGE_TAG="<new backend version>"
  5. Restart your containers 
    docker compose -f compose.custom_certs.yml up -d
  6. You have successfully updated R2Devops on your server 🎉

🔄 Backup and restore​

Data required to fully backup and restore a R2Devops system are the following:

  • Configuration file: .env
  • Databases:
    • PostgreSQL database of Jobs service
  • Files data:
    • Files stored in the Minio service
    • File storing data about certificate for Traefik service

All these data can be easily backup and restored using 2 scripts from the installation git repository:

  • backup.sh
  • restore.sh

💽 Backup​

To backup the system, go to your installation git repository and run the following command:

./backup.sh

The script will create a backups directory and create a backup archive inside it prefixed with the date (backup_r2-$DATE)

Regular backup

You can use a cron job to perform regular backups. Here is a cron job that launch a backup every day at 2am:

0 2 * * * /r2devops/backup.sh

It can be added to your crontab with the command crontab -e. Check more information about cron jobs here.

🛳️ Restore​

To restore a backup from scratch on a new system, follow this process:

  1. Be sure that your new system is compliant with requirements
  2. Copy the backup file on your new server
  3. Clone the installation repository 
    git clone https://gitlab.com/r2devops/self-managed.git r2devops
    cd r2devops/docker-compose
  4. If the IP address of your server changed from your previous installation, update your DNS records. See section 2 of domain configuration
  5. Launch the restore script 
    ./restore.sh <path_to_your_backup_file>
Any errors during the restore process ?

Did you encounter a problem during the restore process ? See the troubleshooting section.