I've spun up a fresh Amazon EC2 instance for a micro Ubuntu 13 server to be used as a GitLab server. I know the specs are a little low, but it should serve well for my purposes. It has an elastic (static) IP address that I have created an A record for git.mydomain.com.

The first thing I did to the instance was add 1GB of swap to keep it happy from a memory perspective.

I then set the hostname of the box to be git.mydomain.com and followed https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/6-2-stable/doc/install/installation.md to the letter. Everything seems to have worked, except for the web server side of things.

Doing a gitlab:check shows the following:

Checking Environment ...

Git configured for git user? ... yes
Has python2? ... yes
python2 is supported version? ... yes

Checking Environment ... Finished

Checking GitLab Shell ...

GitLab Shell version >= 1.7.4 ? ... OK (1.7.4)
Repo base directory exists? ... yes
Repo base directory is a symlink? ... no
Repo base owned by git:git? ... yes
Repo base access is drwxrws---? ... yes
update hook up-to-date? ... yes
update hooks in repos are links: ... can't check, you have no projects
Running /home/git/gitlab-shell/bin/check
Check GitLab API access: /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:878:in `initialize': Connection refused - connect(2) (Errno::ECONNREFUSED)
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:878:in `open'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:878:in `block in connect'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/timeout.rb:52:in `timeout'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:877:in `connect'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:862:in `do_start'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/2.0.0/net/http.rb:851:in `start'
        from /home/git/gitlab-shell/lib/gitlab_net.rb:62:in `get'
        from /home/git/gitlab-shell/lib/gitlab_net.rb:29:in `check'
        from /home/git/gitlab-shell/bin/check:11:in `<main>'
gitlab-shell self-check failed
  Try fixing it:
  Make sure GitLab is running;
  Check the gitlab-shell configuration file:
  sudo -u git -H editor /home/git/gitlab-shell/config.yml
  Please fix the error above and rerun the checks.

Checking GitLab Shell ... Finished

Checking Sidekiq ...

Running? ... yes
Number of Sidekiq processes ... 1

Checking Sidekiq ... Finished

Checking GitLab ...

Database config exists? ... yes
Database is SQLite ... no
All migrations up? ... yes
GitLab config exists? ... yes
GitLab config outdated? ... no
Log directory writable? ... yes
Tmp directory writable? ... yes
Init script exists? ... yes
Init script up-to-date? ... yes
projects have namespace: ... can't check, you have no projects
Projects have satellites? ... can't check, you have no projects
Redis version >= 2.0.0? ... yes
Your git bin path is "/usr/bin/git"
Git version >= 1.7.10 ? ... yes (1.8.3)

Checking GitLab ... Finished

It seems like I'm very nearly there. Searching on this error I have only found advice that unfortunately hasn't helped. I'm not using any kind of SSL setup, which a lot of the posts I found were about. I have tried appending 127.0.0.1 git.mydomain.com to /etc/hosts and giving the instance a reboot but there was no change. My config/gitlab.yml file has host: git.mydomain.com in it, and my gitlab-shell/config.yml has gitlab_url: "http://git.mydomain.com/" in it. I'm sure I'm missing something simple, but I've been through every relevant link I can find and have had no positive results; thank you in advance for any help!