Restore GitLab from backup

hello community

Problem to solve

My server crashed yesterday. I can access a copy of all my file on the server thanks to a backup. I restored on my workstation the ‘git-data’ directory containing the projects.
I tried to test to restore it through docker CE without success as I never see from the web interface my old projects i can create new one, but impossible to find the old one.

I somehow followed these explanations without success: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19902417/change-the-data-directory-gitlab-to-store-repos-elsewhere

I’m connected with the newly create root account but I think that is not a problem to see my old projects that did not belong to root.

Thanks for taking the time to be thorough in your request, it really helps!

Was the backup just the files with the repositories? There’s more to GitLab than that, which is also why (a major reason at least) GitLab ships with scripts for backup and restore. The main thing you’re missing is the database which among other things know which projects there are and where to look for them.

If all you have is the data of the actual projects I think the way forward will be to re-push all that data to GitLab, I don’t know if you have to create the projects in the Web UI first, or if you can set things up so a push to a non-existing project creates the project. I’m also not familiar enough with git to know how you go about pushing all branches etc.