---
stage: Enablement
group: Distribution
info: To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments
---

# Downgrading from EE to CE

If you ever decide to downgrade your Enterprise Edition back to the
Community Edition, there are a few steps you need take beforehand. On Omnibus GitLab
installations, these steps are made before installing the CE package on top of
the current EE package. On installations from source, they are done before
you change remotes and fetch the latest CE code.

## Disable Enterprise-only features

First thing to do is to disable the following features.

### Authentication mechanisms

Kerberos and Atlassian Crowd are only available on the Enterprise Edition. You
should disable these mechanisms before downgrading. Be sure to provide
alternative authentication methods to your users.

### Remove Service Integration entries from the database

The GitHub integration is only available in the Enterprise Edition codebase,
so if you downgrade to the Community Edition, the following error displays:

```plaintext
Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 497ms (ActiveRecord: 32.2ms)

ActionView::Template::Error (The single-table inheritance mechanism failed to locate the subclass: 'GithubService'. This
error is raised because the column 'type' is reserved for storing the class in case of inheritance. Please rename this
column if you didn't intend it to be used for storing the inheritance class or overwrite Integration.inheritance_column to
use another column for that information.)
```

All integrations are created automatically for every project you have.
To avoid getting this error, you must remove all records with the type set to
`GithubService` from your database:

- **Omnibus Installation**

  ```shell
  sudo gitlab-rails runner "Integration.where(type: ['GithubService']).delete_all"
  ```

- **Source Installation**

  ```shell
  bundle exec rails runner "Integration.where(type: ['GithubService']).delete_all" production
  ```

NOTE:
If you are running `GitLab =< v13.0` you must also remove `JenkinsDeprecatedService` records
and if you are running `GitLab =< v13.6` you must remove `JenkinsService` records.

### Variables environment scopes

In GitLab Community Edition, [environment scopes](../user/group/clusters/index.md#environment-scopes)
are completely ignored, so if you are using this feature there may be some
necessary adjustments to your configuration. This is especially true if
configuration variables share the same key, but have different
scopes in a project. In cases like these you could accidentally get a variable
which you're not expecting for a particular environment. Make sure that you have
the right variables in this case.

Your data is completely preserved in the transition, so you could always upgrade
back to EE and restore the behavior if you leave it alone.

## Downgrade to CE

After performing the above mentioned steps, you are now ready to downgrade your
GitLab installation to the Community Edition.

- **Omnibus Installation**

  To downgrade an Omnibus installation, it is sufficient to install the Community
  Edition package on top of the currently installed one. You can do this manually,
  by directly [downloading the package](https://packages.gitlab.com/gitlab/gitlab-ce)
  you need, or by adding our CE package repository and following the
  [CE installation instructions](https://about.gitlab.com/install/?version=ce).

- **Source Installation**

  To downgrade a source installation, you must replace the current remote of
  your GitLab installation with the Community Edition's remote. After that, you
  can fetch the latest changes, and checkout the latest stable branch:
  
  ```shell
  git remote set-url origin git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab-foss.git
  git fetch --all
  git checkout 8-x-stable
  ```

Remember to follow the correct [update guides](../update/index.md) to make
sure all dependencies are up to date.
