Upgrade Gitlab CE from 12.9.2 to 13.3.2

My Gitlab CE instance is running on a VM at the Dell R710 server. I have not to look at it and upgrade it for a long time.

Yesterday I SSH to this VM and run the apt update and apt upgrade, found the error of the key signing of the gitlab repository.

The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3F01618A51312F3F

Later I found the GPG key used to sign GitLab package repositories’ metadata is changed on Apr. 6, 2020. vi

OK, just update this key signing first.

Follow the command below to update the key.

# Download the new key
curl https://packages.gitlab.com/gpg.key -o /tmp/omnibus_gitlab_gpg.key

# Import the key
## Debian/Ubuntu/Raspbian
$ sudo apt-key add /tmp/omnibus_gitlab_gpg.key

# CentOS/OpenSUSE/SLES
$ sudo rpm --import /tmp/omnibus_gitlab_gpg.key

Then I run the apt update and apt upgrade commands to check the update.

I got the following error.

It said I can not upgrade my GitLab 12.9.2 to the latest 13.3.2. Because it found I am upgrading from major version 12 to major version 13. It gives me a link to upgrade documentation.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/policy/maintenance.html#upgrade-recommendations

I studied it and decide on the path to upgrade.

My current version 12.9.2 -> 12.9.10 -> 12.10.14 -> 13.0.12 -> 13.1.8 -> 13.2.6 -> 13.3.2

I have to upgrade my GitLab step by step, from one version to another version. Until the latest one. It took me more than an hour to do all these upgrades. Each one has a 700+ MB upgrade package. Downloading and installation take time.

The command to upgrade with a specific version. I use 13.1.8 as a sample version number.

sudo apt upgrade gitlab-ce=13.1.8-ce.0

Here is a link of GitLab release lists.