How to migrate gitlab backups to new server which has latest gitlab version

Question

I am trying to migrate my gitlab backups for my old server to new server. my old server has gitlab (gitlab-6.5.1-0) and my new server has gitlab version (gitlab 6.6.5-omnibus). i taken backup from my old server using the following command

bundle exec rake gitlab:backup:create RAILS_ENV=production

and when i try to restore this backup in new server using this command

gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:restore BACKUP=1395394855

I am getting the following output

Unpacking backup ... done
GitLab version mismatch:
  Your current GitLab version (6.6.5) differs from the GitLab version in the backup!
  Please switch to the following version and try again:
  version: 6f6f1588ba5123f156ee3b0635a061745b71fcde

I tried searching for solution . but in all documents its says The backup is already migrated to the previous version. but none of them describes how to migrate backups . Any solution regarding this is Appreciated !

Answer 1

This error message is produced by lib/backup/manager.rb#L87-L92:

  settings = YAML.load_file("backup_information.yml")
  ENV["VERSION"] = "#{settings[:db_version]}" if settings[:db_version].to_i > 0

  # restoring mismatching backups can lead to unexpected problems
  if settings[:gitlab_version] != Gitlab::VERSION
    puts "GitLab version mismatch:".red

It seems to force an incremental backup, as described in this comment:

I have faced the same issue when restoring the backup to a new server.

backup.rake checks GITLAB commit number at time of backup is taken and when you are restoring to the same branch name from latest check out.

I have to:

• delete 5-2-stable and
• check out again 5-2-stable with the same commit hash ( git checkout -b 5-2-stable COMMIT-HASH),
• ran all tasks as installing a fresh 5-2-stable release with same config/gitlab.yml, config/database.yml.
• Then I have copied backup.tar file into default /home/git/gitlab/tmp/backups and ran restore rake task.

It worked without any problem. Then I have followed 5-2-stable to 5-3-stable upgrade and it went all well.