Skip to main content

Raymii.org Raymii.org Logo

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Home | About | All pages | Cluster Status | RSS Feed

Gitlab Active Directory LDAP Authentication

Published: 28-05-2013 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article


❗ This post is over eleven years old. It may no longer be up to date. Opinions may have changed.

Gitlab is a self hosted git based source control application similar to Github, written in Ruby on Rails. It is used by many organisations and is a wonderfull piece of software. It supports LDAP Authentication (via the OmniAuth Gem), but it is tricky to set up with Active Directory and Windows Server 2003/2008/2012. This tutorials shows you how to set up Gitlab to authenticate against Active Directory LDAP.

Recently I removed all Google Ads from this site due to their invasive tracking, as well as Google Analytics. Please, if you found this content useful, consider a small donation using any of the options below:

I'm developing an open source monitoring app called Leaf Node Monitoring, for windows, linux & android. Go check it out!

Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs.

You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $200 credit for 60 days. Spend $25 after your credit expires and I'll get $25!

You have to have a working Gitlab installation for this. It is tested with Gitlab 3 and up to 5.2, with an Active Directory 2008 env, and a Mixed 2008 & 2003 AD. Gitlab is installed on a Ubuntu box.

First create a user in the Active Directory. My CN is Users, and my user is named gitlab. It does not have any special permissions, it is just a normal user. Note the Full Name you use, in my example it is "Gitlab LDAP". See the image below for an example:

windows-gitlab

Now go to your Gitlab server, log in and become the git user:

sudo su - git

And edit the ~/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml file. (Assuming you followed the official installation guide, otherwise adapt path.). The relevant LDAP section should contain this:

  ldap:
    enabled: true
    host: 'pdc1.domain.tld'
    base: 'CN=Users,DC=Domain,DC=tld'
    port: 389
    uid: 'sAMAccountName'
    method: 'plain' # or "ssl"
    bind_dn: 'CN=Gitlab LDAP,CN=Users,DC=Domain,DC=tld'
    password: 'example_password'

It took me a while to find the correct bind_dn and base_dn. It appears that they are capital sensitive, cn=Users would not work, but CN=Users does. Also, the bind_dn does not use the users email address, but the Display Name. So CN=gitlab@domain.tld does not work, but CN=Gitlab LDAP does.

Hope this helps you setting up Gitlab with LDAP auth. More info on Gitlab can be found on their website: http://gitlab.org/.

Tags: active-directory , git , github , gitlab , gitlabshell , ldap , microsoft , scm , source-control , tutorials , windows-server