GitLab App Import Restore Issues

[RubenFixit]

I ran into an issue with the Gitlab redis server hanging. Restarting redis and changing allocated memory didn't resolve it, so I uninstalled the app with the intention of restoring it to get a fresh install of redis.

I then followed these steps https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#restore-app to restore the app.

Restoring completes without error, but then when I go to the GitLab login page I get this error as soon as it loads: "No authentication methods configured."

To prep for restoring an app from an imported backup we must install the app first from the app store. I made sure to install the same version from the app store that matches the backup. I also tried installing the app and preforming an import restore several times. I even tried with installing with "Leave user management to the app" and the "Allow all users from this Cloudron" options. When using cloudron I get the option to authenticate with my cloudron account but once I sign in, I get a 500 error.

I then started manually checking the postgres tables, and noticed that all the tables are empty. So it would appear that the DB restore didn't work. Or the DB backups aren't working. The backup tar.gz is ~500MB so I doubt that's the issue.

Platform Version: v8.3.2 (Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS)
Vendor: Xen
Product: HVM domU
CPU: 16 Core "Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz"
Memory: 37.82 GB RAM & 8.59 GB Swap
Uptime: 13 days

App Title and Version: GitLab 18.0.4
Package Version: com.gitlab.cloudronapp@1.104.4

Backup file: app_gitlab.tcloud.dev_v1.104.4.tar.gz.enc

[james]

Hello @RubenFixit
Could you please decrypt the backup and check the SQL file if the file really contains no records?
If that is not the case, how much memory did you allocate to the PostgreSQL service? (in this sense, maybe increase the memory limit).

[girish]

Usually if the postgresql import fails (lack of memory), then the full import should fail. It shouldn't be the case that gitlab just starts up as empty. It would be in error state.

So, if I understand correcly: the import succeeded (which implies it actually decrypted just fine and also the postgres import worked) and gitlab comes up. Just empty?

[RubenFixit]

Back from vacation. I had to write a script to search the backups for gitlab backups that had postgresqldump files with actual data.

Apparently the last "good" backup that had a good postgresqldump file was back in April (2025-04-24-090000-501/app_gitlab_v1.103.0.tar.gz.enc).

I was finally able to get it working by reapeating the restore steps:

1. Install the matching version of Gitlab to the backup version
2. Then restore by importing the backup

Not sure how exactly it got to this state, but it's finally back up and running!