I have installed Gitlab CE 8.8.5 68cd138 on a machine in a private network. For now, the machine is still only accesible by the local IP address 192.X.X.X. The instance works very well, but it became aparent right away that the instance was unable to serve avatars because it was referencing their address as http://localhost/***avatar.png. This could be fixed by changing gitlab.yml in the following way
gitlab:
host: 192.X.X.X # previously 'localhost'
However, by changing host in this way, it has rendered the postfix email notifications service inoperable. The logs do not seem to indicate any problem sending emails.
I followed the instructions on this page (http://docs.gitlab.com/ce/incoming_email/postfix.html), but the machine is not accessible from outside the network. For now, I have not setup the machine to take incoming messages, and there is no smtp server on the machine at the moment.
Ideally, I am searching for a way to fix the server's ability to serve gitlab pages (including avatars) with prompt notifications by email that cannot be replied to. I would appreciate any advice on how to reconfigure the system for operation.
The postfix emailing service was unreliable, so I ended up working an SMTP server into the workflow. However, this also suffered similar reliability issues.
This was all fixed after I moved the entire server to gitlab-ce 8.9.6.