Upgrading GitLab from version 14.x to 15.x

Upgrading GitLab from version 14.x to 15.x

You probably already noticed that you can't upgrade to GitLab version 15 released using your package manager. You see similar error message:

Preparing to unpack .../gitlab-ce_15.0.5-ce.0_amd64.deb ...
gitlab preinstall: It seems you are upgrading from major version 14 to major version 15.
gitlab preinstall: It is required to upgrade to the latest 14.10.x version first before proceeding.
gitlab preinstall: Please follow the upgrade documentation at https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/index.html#upgrade-paths
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/gitlab-ce_15.0.5-ce.0_amd64.deb (--unpack):

Backup your instance

Before performing any action, take a backup from your GitLab instance, see: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/backup_gitlab.html

Upgrade path

First it is important to understand the GitLab upgrade paths. It is required to upgrade to the latest version 14.x which is 14.10.5 version first before proceeding to 15.x See for more information about upgrade paths: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/#upgrade-paths

Before you can upgrade to version 15, you must upgrade first to the intermediate version which is 14.10. This can be done by the following command:

sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee=14.10.5-ee.0

If the upgrade is completed successfully, please check if the GitLab server is misbehaving. If so, please restart GitLab by using the command

sudo gitlab-ctl restart

Then we will upgrade to the version 15 and then the step to go to the most recent version. Use the following commands

apt-get install gitlab-ee=15.0.5-ee.0
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade -y