Thanks for your reply. Walking through the process atm. Any idea where I can find the .secret file? It's not in /home/git in the server with old installation.
There should supposed to be a .secret file which I need to restore the backup.
To restore a backup, you will also need to restore /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json (for Omnibus packages) or /home/git/gitlab/.secret (for installations from source). This file contains the database encryption key, CI secret variables, and secret variables used for two-factor authentication. If you fail to restore this encryption key file along with the application data backup, users with two-factor authentication enabled and GitLab Runners will lose access to your GitLab server.
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/backup_restore.html
edit: it seems that I didn't need this file and that it's only needed while restoring on the same server. Is this correct? Can you confirm/deny? Thanks.