I have just installed gitlab and nginx on Ubuntu LTS 12.04 using this guide: http://blog.compunet.co.za/gitlab-installation-on-ubuntu-server-12-04/ I installed this on another server last night and had absolutely no problems with it (sort of a test run to see how long it would take to get going). I am not getting any errors when restarting gitlab or nginx with /etc/init.d and my error logs are empty. The only thing I know of to go on is the vhost config: upstream gitlab { server unix:/home/gitlab/gitlab/tmp/sockets/gitlab.sock$ } server { listen localhost:80; server_name gitlab.bluringdev.com; root /home/gitlab/gitlab/public; # individual nginx logs for this gitlab vhost access_log /var/log/nginx/gitlab_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/gitlab_error.log; location / { # serve static files from defined root folder;. # @gitlab is a named location for the upstream fallback$ try_files $uri $uri/index.html $uri.html @gitlab; } # if a file, which is not found in the root folder is r$ # then the proxy pass the request to the upsteam (gitla$ location @gitlab { proxy_redirect off; # you need to change this to "https", if you set "ssl" $ proxy_set_header X-FORWARDED_PROTO http; proxy_set_header Host gitlab.bluringdev.com:80; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_pass http://gitlab; } } If there's any other information that would be helpful, just let me know and I'll get it up asap.