GitLab Pages administration (FREE SELF)

GitLab Pages allows for hosting of static sites. It must be configured by an administrator. Separate user documentation is available.

NOTE: This guide is for Omnibus GitLab installations. If you have installed GitLab from source, see GitLab Pages administration for source installations.

Overview

GitLab Pages makes use of the GitLab Pages daemon, a basic HTTP server written in Go that can listen on an external IP address and provide support for custom domains and custom certificates. It supports dynamic certificates through Server Name Indication (SNI) and exposes pages using HTTP2 by default. You are encouraged to read its README to fully understand how it works.

In the case of custom domains (but not wildcard domains), the Pages daemon needs to listen on ports 80 and/or 443. For that reason, there is some flexibility in the way which you can set it up:

• Run the Pages daemon in the same server as GitLab, listening on a secondary IP.
• Run the Pages daemon in a separate server. In that case, the Pages path must also be present in the server that the Pages daemon is installed, so you must share it through the network.
• Run the Pages daemon in the same server as GitLab, listening on the same IP but on different ports. In that case, you must proxy the traffic with a load balancer. If you choose that route, you should use TCP load balancing for HTTPS. If you use TLS-termination (HTTPS-load balancing), the pages can't be served with user-provided certificates. For HTTP it's OK to use HTTP or TCP load balancing.

In this document, we proceed assuming the first option. If you are not supporting custom domains a secondary IP is not needed.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the Pages configuration, you must:

1. Have a domain for Pages that is not a subdomain of your GitLab instance domain.

   GitLab domain	Pages domain	Does it work?
   example.com	example.io	{check-circle} Yes
   example.com	pages.example.com	{dotted-circle} No
   gitlab.example.com	pages.example.com	{check-circle} Yes

2. Configure a wildcard DNS record.

3. Optional. Have a wildcard certificate for that domain if you decide to serve Pages under HTTPS.

4. Optional but recommended. Enable Shared runners so that your users don't have to bring their own.

5. For custom domains, have a secondary IP.

NOTE: If your GitLab instance and the Pages daemon are deployed in a private network or behind a firewall, your GitLab Pages websites are only accessible to devices/users that have access to the private network.

Add the domain to the Public Suffix List

The Public Suffix List is used by browsers to decide how to treat subdomains. If your GitLab instance allows members of the public to create GitLab Pages sites, it also allows those users to create subdomains on the pages domain (example.io). Adding the domain to the Public Suffix List prevents browsers from accepting supercookies, among other things.

Follow these instructions to submit your GitLab Pages subdomain. For instance, if your domain is example.io, you should request that example.io is added to the Public Suffix List. GitLab.com added gitlab.io in 2016.

DNS configuration

GitLab Pages expect to run on their own virtual host. In your DNS server/provider add a wildcard DNS A record pointing to the host that GitLab runs. For example, an entry would look like this:

*.example.io. 1800 IN A    192.0.2.1
*.example.io. 1800 IN AAAA 2001:db8::1

Where example.io is the domain GitLab Pages is served from, 192.0.2.1 is the IPv4 address of your GitLab instance, and 2001:db8::1 is the IPv6 address. If you don't have IPv6, you can omit the AAAA record.

DNS configuration for custom domains

If support for custom domains is needed, all subdomains of the Pages root domain should point to the secondary IP (which is dedicated for the Pages daemon). Without this configuration, users can't use CNAME records to point their custom domains to their GitLab Pages.

For example, an entry could look like this:

example.com   1800 IN A    192.0.2.1
*.example.io. 1800 IN A    192.0.2.2

This example contains the following:

• example.com: The GitLab domain.
• example.io: The domain GitLab Pages is served from.
• 192.0.2.1: The primary IP of your GitLab instance.
• 192.0.2.2: The secondary IP, which is dedicated to GitLab Pages. It must be different than the primary IP.

NOTE: You should not use the GitLab domain to serve user pages. For more information see the security section.

Configuration

Depending on your needs, you can set up GitLab Pages in 4 different ways.

The following examples are listed from the easiest setup to the most advanced one. The absolute minimum requirement is to set up the wildcard DNS because that is needed in all configurations.

Wildcard domains

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup

URL scheme: http://<namespace>.example.io/<project_slug>

The following is the minimum setup that you can use Pages with. It is the base for all other setups as described below. NGINX proxies all requests to the daemon. The Pages daemon doesn't listen to the outside world.

1. Set the external URL for GitLab Pages in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   external_url "http://gitlab.example.com" # external_url here is only for reference
   pages_external_url "http://pages.example.com" # not a subdomain of external_url

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Watch the video tutorial for this configuration.

Wildcard domains with TLS support

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup
• Wildcard TLS certificate

URL scheme: https://<namespace>.example.io/<project_slug>

NGINX proxies all requests to the daemon. Pages daemon doesn't listen to the outside world.

1. Place the example.io certificate and key inside /etc/gitlab/ssl.

2. In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb specify the following configuration:

   external_url "https://gitlab.example.com" # external_url here is only for reference
   pages_external_url "https://pages.example.com" # not a subdomain of external_url
   
   pages_nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true

3. If you haven't named your certificate and key example.io.crt and example.io.key, you must also add the full paths as shown below:

   pages_nginx['ssl_certificate'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages-nginx.crt"
   pages_nginx['ssl_certificate_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages-nginx.key"

4. Reconfigure GitLab.

5. If you're using Pages Access Control, update the redirect URI in the GitLab Pages System OAuth application to use the HTTPS protocol.

WARNING: Multiple wildcards for one instance is not supported. Only one wildcard per instance can be assigned.

Wildcard domains with TLS-terminating Load Balancer

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup
• TLS-terminating load balancer

URL scheme: https://<namespace>.example.io/<project_slug>

This setup is primarily intended to be used when installing a GitLab POC on Amazon Web Services. This includes a TLS-terminating classic load balancer that listens for HTTPS connections, manages TLS certificates, and forwards HTTP traffic to the instance.

1. In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb specify the following configuration:

   external_url "https://gitlab.example.com" # external_url here is only for reference
   pages_external_url "https://pages.example.com" # not a subdomain of external_url
   
   pages_nginx['enable'] = true
   pages_nginx['listen_port'] = 80
   pages_nginx['listen_https'] = false
   pages_nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Global settings

Below is a table of all configuration settings known to Pages in Omnibus GitLab, and what they do. These options can be adjusted in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb, and take effect after you reconfigure GitLab. Most of these settings don't have to be configured manually unless you need more granular control over how the Pages daemon runs and serves content in your environment.

Advanced configuration

In addition to the wildcard domains, you can also have the option to configure GitLab Pages to work with custom domains. Again, there are two options here: support custom domains with and without TLS certificates. The easiest setup is that without TLS certificates. In either case, you need a secondary IP. If you have IPv6 as well as IPv4 addresses, you can use them both.

Custom domains

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup
• Secondary IP

URL scheme: http://<namespace>.example.io/<project_slug> and http://custom-domain.com

In that case, the Pages daemon is running, NGINX still proxies requests to the daemon but the daemon is also able to receive requests from the outside world. Custom domains are supported, but no TLS.

1. In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb specify the following configuration:

   external_url "http://gitlab.example.com" # external_url here is only for reference
   pages_external_url "http://pages.example.com" # not a subdomain of external_url
   nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['192.0.2.1'] # The primary IP of the GitLab instance
   pages_nginx['enable'] = false
   gitlab_pages['external_http'] = ['192.0.2.2:80', '[2001:db8::2]:80'] # The secondary IPs for the GitLab Pages daemon

   If you don't have IPv6, you can omit the IPv6 address.

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Custom domains with TLS support

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup
• Wildcard TLS certificate
• Secondary IP

URL scheme: https://<namespace>.example.io/<project_slug> and https://custom-domain.com

In that case, the Pages daemon is running, NGINX still proxies requests to the daemon but the daemon is also able to receive requests from the outside world. Custom domains and TLS are supported.

1. Place the example.io certificate and key inside /etc/gitlab/ssl.

2. In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb specify the following configuration:

   external_url "https://gitlab.example.com" # external_url here is only for reference
   pages_external_url "https://pages.example.com" # not a subdomain of external_url
   nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['192.0.2.1'] # The primary IP of the GitLab instance
   pages_nginx['enable'] = false
   gitlab_pages['external_http'] = ['192.0.2.2:80', '[2001:db8::2]:80'] # The secondary IPs for the GitLab Pages daemon
   gitlab_pages['external_https'] = ['192.0.2.2:443', '[2001:db8::2]:443'] # The secondary IPs for the GitLab Pages daemon
   # Redirect pages from HTTP to HTTPS
   gitlab_pages['redirect_http'] = true

   If you don't have IPv6, you can omit the IPv6 address.

3. If you haven't named your certificate and key example.io.crt and example.io.key respectively, then you need to also add the full paths as shown below:

   gitlab_pages['cert'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/example.io.crt"
   gitlab_pages['cert_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/example.io.key"

4. Reconfigure GitLab.

5. If you're using Pages Access Control, update the redirect URI in the GitLab Pages System OAuth application to use the HTTPS protocol.

Custom domain verification

To prevent malicious users from hijacking domains that don't belong to them, GitLab supports custom domain verification. When adding a custom domain, users are required to prove they own it by adding a GitLab-controlled verification code to the DNS records for that domain.

WARNING: Disabling domain verification is unsafe and can lead to various vulnerabilities. If you do disable it, either ensure that the Pages root domain itself does not point to the secondary IP or add the root domain as custom domain to a project; otherwise, any user can add this domain as a custom domain to their project.

If your user base is private or otherwise trusted, you can disable the verification requirement:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Preferences.
3. Expand Pages.
4. Clear the Require users to prove ownership of custom domains checkbox. This setting is enabled by default.

Let's Encrypt integration

Introduced in GitLab 12.1.

GitLab Pages' Let's Encrypt integration allows users to add Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for GitLab Pages sites served under a custom domain.

To enable it:

1. Choose an email address on which you want to receive notifications about expiring domains.
2. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
3. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Preferences.
4. Expand Pages.
5. Enter the email address for receiving notifications and accept Let's Encrypt's Terms of Service.
6. Select Save changes.

Access control

GitLab Pages access control can be configured per-project, and allows access to a Pages site to be controlled based on a user's membership to that project.

Access control works by registering the Pages daemon as an OAuth application with GitLab. Whenever a request to access a private Pages site is made by an unauthenticated user, the Pages daemon redirects the user to GitLab. If authentication is successful, the user is redirected back to Pages with a token, which is persisted in a cookie. The cookies are signed with a secret key, so tampering can be detected.

Each request to view a resource in a private site is authenticated by Pages using that token. For each request it receives, it makes a request to the GitLab API to check that the user is authorized to read that site.

Pages access control is disabled by default. To enable it:

1. Enable it in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['access_control'] = true

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

3. Users can now configure it in their projects' settings.

NOTE: For this setting to be effective with multi-node setups, it has to be applied to all the App nodes and Sidekiq nodes.

Using Pages with reduced authentication scope

Introduced in GitLab 13.10.

By default, the Pages daemon uses the api scope to authenticate. You can configure this. For example, this reduces the scope to read_api in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

gitlab_pages['auth_scope'] = 'read_api'

The scope to use for authentication must match the GitLab Pages OAuth application settings. Users of pre-existing applications must modify the GitLab Pages OAuth application. Follow these steps to do this:

1. Enable access control.
2. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
3. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Applications.
4. Expand GitLab Pages.
5. Clear the api scope's checkbox and select the desired scope's checkbox (for example, read_api).
6. Select Save changes.

Disable public access to all Pages sites

Introduced in GitLab 12.7.

You can enforce Access Control for all GitLab Pages websites hosted on your GitLab instance. By doing so, only logged-in users have access to them. This setting overrides Access Control set by users in individual projects.

This can be helpful to restrict information published with Pages websites to the users of your instance only. To do that:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Preferences.
3. Expand Pages.
4. Select the Disable public access to Pages sites checkbox.
5. Select Save changes.

Running behind a proxy

Like the rest of GitLab, Pages can be used in those environments where external internet connectivity is gated by a proxy. To use a proxy for GitLab Pages:

1. Configure in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['env']['http_proxy'] = 'http://example:8080'

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Using a custom Certificate Authority (CA)

When using certificates issued by a custom CA, Access Control and the online view of HTML job artifacts fails to work if the custom CA is not recognized.

This usually results in this error: Post /oauth/token: x509: certificate signed by unknown authority.

For installation from source, this can be fixed by installing the custom Certificate Authority (CA) in the system certificate store.

For Omnibus, this is fixed by installing a custom CA in Omnibus GitLab.

Support mutual TLS when calling the GitLab API

Introduced in GitLab 14.8.

If GitLab has been configured to require mutual TLS, you need to add the client certificates to Pages:

1. Configure in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['client_cert_key_pairs'] = ['</path/to/cert>:</path/to/key>']

   Where </path/to/cert> and </path/to/key> are the file paths to the client certificate and its respective key file. Both of these files must be encoded in PEM format.

2. To configure Pages to validate the server certificates, add the root CA to the system trust store.

ZIP serving and cache configuration

Introduced in GitLab 13.7.

WARNING: These instructions deal with some advanced settings of your GitLab instance. The recommended default values are set inside GitLab Pages. You should change these settings only if absolutely necessary. Use extreme caution.

GitLab Pages can serve content from ZIP archives through object storage (an issue exists for supporting disk storage as well). It uses an in-memory cache to increase the performance when serving content from a ZIP archive. You can modify the cache behavior by changing the following configuration flags.

ZIP cache refresh example

Archives are refreshed in the cache (extending the time they are held in memory) if they're accessed before zip_cache_expiration, and the time left before expiring is less than or equal to zip_cache_refresh. For example, if archive.zip is accessed at time 0s, it expires in 60s (the default for zip_cache_expiration). In the example below, if the archive is opened again after 15s it is not refreshed because the time left for expiry (45s) is greater than zip_cache_refresh (default 30s). However, if the archive is accessed again after 45s (from the first time it was opened) it's refreshed. This extends the time the archive remains in memory from 45s + zip_cache_expiration (60s), for a total of 105s.

After an archive reaches zip_cache_expiration, it's marked as expired and removed on the next zip_cache_cleanup interval.

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) support

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) can be enabled through the gitlab_pages['headers'] configuration option. HSTS informs browsers that the website they are visiting should always provide its content over HTTPS to ensure that attackers cannot force subsequent connections to happen unencrypted. It can also improve loading speed of pages as it prevents browsers from attempting to connect over an unencrypted HTTP channel before being redirected to HTTPS.

gitlab_pages['headers'] = ['Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000']

Pages project redirects limits

Introduced in GitLab 15.2.

GitLab Pages comes with a set of default limits for the _redirects file to minimize the impact on performance. You can configure these limits if you'd like to increase or decrease the limits.

gitlab_pages['redirects_max_config_size'] = 131072
gitlab_pages['redirects_max_path_segments'] = 50
gitlab_pages['redirects_max_rule_count'] = 2000

Activate verbose logging for daemon

Follow the steps below to configure verbose logging of GitLab Pages daemon.

1. By default the daemon only logs with INFO level. If you wish to make it log events with level DEBUG you must configure this in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['log_verbose'] = true

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Propagating the correlation ID

Introduced in GitLab 13.10.

Setting the propagate_correlation_id to true allows installations behind a reverse proxy to generate and set a correlation ID to requests sent to GitLab Pages. When a reverse proxy sets the header value X-Request-ID, the value propagates in the request chain. Users can find the correlation ID in the logs.

To enable the propagation of the correlation ID:

1. Set the parameter to true in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['propagate_correlation_id'] = true

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Change storage path

Follow the steps below to change the default path where GitLab Pages' contents are stored.

1. Pages are stored by default in /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages. If you wish to store them in another location you must set it up in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['pages_path'] = "/mnt/storage/pages"

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Alternatively, if you have existing Pages deployed you can follow the below steps to do a no downtime transfer to a new storage location.

1. Pause Pages deployments by setting the following in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   sidekiq['queue_selector'] = true
   sidekiq['queue_groups'] = [
     "feature_category!=pages"
   ]

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

3. rsync contents from the current storage location to the new storage location: sudo rsync -avzh --progress /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/ /mnt/storage/pages

4. Set the new storage location in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['pages_path'] = "/mnt/storage/pages"

5. Reconfigure GitLab.

6. Verify Pages are still being served up as expected.

7. Resume Pages deployments by removing from /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb the sidekiq setting set above.

8. Reconfigure GitLab.

9. Trigger a new Pages deployment and verify it's working as expected.

10. Remove the old Pages storage location: sudo rm -rf /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages

11. Verify Pages are still being served up as expected.

Configure listener for reverse proxy requests

Follow the steps below to configure the proxy listener of GitLab Pages.

1. By default the listener is configured to listen for requests on localhost:8090.

   If you wish to disable it you must configure this in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['listen_proxy'] = nil

   If you wish to make it listen on a different port you must configure this also in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['listen_proxy'] = "localhost:10080"

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Set global maximum size of each GitLab Pages site (FREE SELF)

Prerequisites:

• Only GitLab administrators can edit this setting.

To set the global maximum pages size for a project:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Preferences.
3. Expand Pages.
4. Enter a value under Maximum size of pages.
5. Select Save changes.

Set maximum size of each GitLab Pages site in a group (PREMIUM SELF)

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the group.

To set the maximum size of each GitLab Pages site in a group, overriding the inherited setting:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Groups and find your group.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Pages.
4. Enter a value under Maximum size in MB.
5. Select Save changes.

Set maximum size of GitLab Pages site in a project (PREMIUM SELF)

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.

To set the maximum size of GitLab Pages site in a project, overriding the inherited setting:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find your project.
2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Pages.
3. Enter a value under Maximum size of pages in MB.
4. Select Save changes.

Running GitLab Pages on a separate server

You can run the GitLab Pages daemon on a separate server to decrease the load on your main application server.

To configure GitLab Pages on a separate server:

WARNING: The following procedure includes steps to back up and edit the gitlab-secrets.json file. This file contains secrets that control database encryption. Proceed with caution.

1. Create a backup of the secrets file on the GitLab server:

   cp /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json.bak

2. On the GitLab server, to enable Pages, add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   pages_external_url "http://<pages_server_URL>"

3. Optionally, to enable access control, add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['access_control'] = true

4. Configure the object storage and migrate pages data to it.

5. Reconfigure the GitLab server for the changes to take effect. The gitlab-secrets.json file is now updated with the new configuration.

6. Set up a new server. This becomes the Pages server.

7. On the Pages server, install Omnibus GitLab and modify /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb to include:

   roles ['pages_role']
   
   pages_external_url "http://<pages_server_URL>"
   
   gitlab_pages['gitlab_server'] = 'http://<gitlab_server_IP_or_URL>'
   
   ## If access control was enabled on step 3
   gitlab_pages['access_control'] = true

8. If you have custom UID/GID settings on the GitLab server, add them to the Pages server /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb as well, otherwise running a gitlab-ctl reconfigure on the GitLab server can change file ownership and cause Pages requests to fail.

9. Create a backup of the secrets file on the Pages server:

   cp /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json.bak

10. Copy the /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json file from the GitLab server to the Pages server.

    # On the GitLab server
    cp /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json /mnt/pages/gitlab-secrets.json
    
    # On the Pages server
    mv /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/gitlab-secrets.json /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json

11. Reconfigure the Pages server for the changes to take effect.

12. On the GitLab server, make the following changes to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

    pages_external_url "http://<pages_server_URL>"
    gitlab_pages['enable'] = false
    pages_nginx['enable'] = false

13. Reconfigure the GitLab server for the changes to take effect.

It's possible to run GitLab Pages on multiple servers if you wish to distribute the load. You can do this through standard load balancing practices such as configuring your DNS server to return multiple IPs for your Pages server, configuring a load balancer to work at the IP level, and so on. If you wish to set up GitLab Pages on multiple servers, perform the above procedure for each Pages server.

Domain source configuration

When GitLab Pages daemon serves pages requests it firstly needs to identify which project should be used to serve the requested URL and how its content is stored.

Before GitLab 13.3, all pages content was extracted to the special shared directory, and each project had a special configuration file. The Pages daemon was reading these configuration files and storing their content in memory.

This approach had several disadvantages and was replaced with GitLab Pages using the internal GitLab API every time a new domain is requested. The domain information is also cached by the Pages daemon to speed up subsequent requests.

From GitLab 13.3 to GitLab 13.12 GitLab Pages supported both ways of obtaining domain information.

Starting from GitLab 14.0 GitLab Pages uses API by default and fails to start if it can't connect to it. For common issues, see the troubleshooting section.

For more details see this blog post.

Domain source configuration before 14.0

Introduced in GitLab 13.3.

WARNING: domain_config_source parameter is removed and has no effect starting from GitLab 14.0

From GitLab 13.3 to GitLab 13.12 GitLab Pages can either use disk or gitlab domain configuration source.

We highly advise you to use gitlab configuration source as it makes transitions to newer versions easier.

To explicitly enable API source:

1. Add the following to your /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file:

   gitlab_pages['domain_config_source'] = "gitlab"

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Or if you want to use legacy configuration source you can:

1. Add the following to your /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file:

   gitlab_pages['domain_config_source'] = "disk"

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

GitLab API cache configuration

Introduced in GitLab 13.10.

API-based configuration uses a caching mechanism to improve performance and reliability of serving Pages. The cache behavior can be modified by changing the cache settings, however, the recommended values are set for you and should only be modified if needed. Incorrect configuration of these values may result in intermittent or persistent errors, or the Pages Daemon serving old content.

NOTE: Expiry, interval and timeout flags use Golang's duration formatting. A duration string is a possibly signed sequence of decimal numbers, each with optional fraction and a unit suffix, such as 300ms, 1.5h or 2h45m. Valid time units are ns, us (or µs), ms, s, m, h.

Examples:

• Increasing gitlab_cache_expiry allows items to exist in the cache longer. This setting might be useful if the communication between GitLab Pages and GitLab Rails is not stable.

• Increasing gitlab_cache_refresh reduces the frequency at which GitLab Pages requests a domain's configuration from GitLab Rails. This setting might be useful GitLab Pages generates too many requests to GitLab API and content does not change frequently.

• Decreasing gitlab_cache_cleanup removes expired items from the cache more frequently, reducing the memory usage of your Pages node.

• Decreasing gitlab_retrieval_timeout allows you to stop the request to GitLab Rails more quickly. Increasing it allows more time to receive a response from the API, useful in slow networking environments.

• Decreasing gitlab_retrieval_interval makes requests to the API more frequently, only when there is an error response from the API, for example a connection timeout.

• Decreasing gitlab_retrieval_retries reduces the number of times a domain's configuration is tried to be resolved automatically before reporting an error.

Using object storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.6.

Read more about using object storage with GitLab.

Object storage settings

The following settings are:

• Nested under pages: and then object_store: on source installations.
• Prefixed by pages_object_store_ on Omnibus GitLab installations.

NOTE: If you want to stop using and disconnect the NFS server, you need to explicitly disable local storage, and it's only possible after upgrading to GitLab 13.11.

S3-compatible connection settings

See the available connection settings for different providers.

In Omnibus installations:

1. Add the following lines to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and replace the values with the ones you want:

   gitlab_rails['pages_object_store_enabled'] = true
   gitlab_rails['pages_object_store_remote_directory'] = "pages"
   gitlab_rails['pages_object_store_connection'] = {
     'provider' => 'AWS',
     'region' => 'eu-central-1',
     'aws_access_key_id' => 'AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID',
     'aws_secret_access_key' => 'AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'
   }

   If you use AWS IAM profiles, be sure to omit the AWS access key and secret access key/value pairs:

   gitlab_rails['pages_object_store_connection'] = {
     'provider' => 'AWS',
     'region' => 'eu-central-1',
     'use_iam_profile' => true
   }

2. Save the file and reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

3. Migrate existing Pages deployments to object storage.

In installations from source:

1. Edit /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml and add or amend the following lines:

   pages:
     object_store:
       enabled: true
       remote_directory: "pages" # The bucket name
       connection:
         provider: AWS # Only AWS supported at the moment
         aws_access_key_id: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
         aws_secret_access_key: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
         region: eu-central-1

2. Save the file and restart GitLab for the changes to take effect.

3. Migrate existing Pages deployments to object storage.

ZIP storage

In GitLab 14.0 the underlying storage format of GitLab Pages is changing from files stored directly in disk to a single ZIP archive per project.

These ZIP archives can be stored either locally on disk storage or on object storage if it is configured.

Starting from GitLab 13.5 ZIP archives are stored every time pages site is updated.

Migrate legacy storage to ZIP storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.11.

GitLab tries to automatically migrate the old storage format to the new ZIP-based one when you upgrade to GitLab 13.11 or further. However, some projects may fail to be migrated for different reasons. To verify that all projects have been migrated successfully, you can manually run the migration:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:migrate_legacy_storage

It's safe to interrupt this task and run it multiple times.

There are two most common problems this task can report:

• Missing public directory error:

  E, [2021-04-09T13:11:52.534768 #911919] ERROR -- : project_id: 1 /home/vlad/gdk/gitlab/shared/pages/gitlab-org/gitlab-test failed to be migrated in 0.07 seconds: Archive not created. Missing public directory in /home/vlad/gdk/gitlab/shared/pages/gitlab-org/gitlab-test

  In this case, you should verify that these projects don't have pages deployed, and re-run the migration with an additional flag to mark those projects as not deployed with GitLab Pages:

  sudo PAGES_MIGRATION_MARK_PROJECTS_AS_NOT_DEPLOYED=true gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:migrate_legacy_storage

• File is invalid error:

  E, [2021-04-09T14:43:05.821767 #923322] ERROR -- : project_id: 1 /home/vlad/gdk/gitlab/shared/pages/gitlab-org/gitlab-test failed to be migrated: /home/vlad/gdk/gitlab/shared/pages/gitlab-org/gitlab-test/public/link is invalid, input_dir: /home/vlad/gdk/gitlab/shared/pages/gitlab-org/gitlab-test

  This error indicates invalid files on disk storage, most commonly symlinks leading outside of the public directory. You can manually remove these files, or just ignore them during migration:

  sudo PAGES_MIGRATION_IGNORE_INVALID_ENTRIES=true gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:migrate_legacy_storage

Rolling back ZIP migration

If you find that migrated data is invalid, you can remove all migrated data by running:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:clean_migrated_zip_storage

This does not remove any data from the legacy disk storage and the GitLab Pages daemon automatically falls back to using that.

Migrate Pages deployments to object storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.11.

Existing Pages deployment objects (which store ZIP archives) can similarly be migrated to object storage.

Migrate your existing Pages deployments from local storage to object storage:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:deployments:migrate_to_object_storage

You can track progress and verify that all Pages deployments migrated successfully using the PostgreSQL console:

• sudo gitlab-rails dbconsole for Omnibus GitLab instances.
• sudo -u git -H psql -d gitlabhq_production for source-installed instances.

Verify objectstg below (where store=2) has count of all Pages deployments:

gitlabhq_production=# SELECT count(*) AS total, sum(case when file_store = '1' then 1 else 0 end) AS filesystem, sum(case when file_store = '2' then 1 else 0 end) AS objectstg FROM pages_deployments;

total | filesystem | objectstg
------+------------+-----------
   10 |          0 |        10

After verifying everything is working correctly, disable Pages local storage.

Rolling Pages deployments back to local storage

After the migration to object storage is performed, you can choose to move your Pages deployments back to local storage:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:deployments:migrate_to_local

Disable Pages local storage

Introduced in GitLab 13.11.

If you use object storage, you can disable local storage to avoid unnecessary disk usage/writes:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['pages_local_store_enabled'] = false

2. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Starting from GitLab 13.12, this setting also disables the legacy storage, so if you were using NFS to serve Pages, you can completely disconnect from it.

Prepare GitLab Pages for 14.0

In GitLab 14.0 a number of breaking changes were introduced which may require some user intervention. The steps below describe the best way to migrate without causing any downtime for your GitLab instance.

A GitLab instance running on a single server typically upgrades to 14.0 smoothly, and there should be minimal issues after the upgrade is complete. Regardless, we recommend everyone follow the migration steps to ensure a successful upgrade. If at any point you run into issues, consult the troubleshooting section.

If your current GitLab version is lower than 13.12, then you must first update to 13.12. Updating directly to 14.0 is not supported and may cause downtime for some web-sites hosted on GitLab Pages. After you update to 13.12, migrate GitLab Pages to prepare them for GitLab 14.0:

1. Set domain_config_source to gitlab, which is the default starting from GitLab 14.0. Skip this step if you're already running GitLab 14.0 or above.
2. If you want to store your pages content in object storage, make sure to configure it. If you want to store the pages content locally or continue using an NFS server, skip this step.
3. Migrate legacy storage to ZIP storage.
4. If you have configured GitLab to store your pages content in object storage, migrate Pages deployments to object storage
5. Upgrade GitLab to 14.0.

Backup

GitLab Pages are part of the regular backup, so there is no separate backup to configure.

Security

You should strongly consider running GitLab Pages under a different hostname than GitLab to prevent XSS attacks.

Rate limits

You can enforce rate limits to help minimize the risk of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. GitLab Pages uses a token bucket algorithm to enforce rate limiting. By default, requests that exceed the specified limits are reported but not rejected.

GitLab Pages supports the following types of rate limiting:

• Per source_ip. It limits how many requests are allowed from the single client IP address.
• Per domain. It limits how many requests are allowed per domain hosted on GitLab Pages. It can be a custom domain like example.com, or group domain like group.gitlab.io.

Rate limits are enforced using the following:

• rate_limit_source_ip: Set the maximum threshold in number of requests per client IP per second. Set to 0 to disable this feature.
• rate_limit_source_ip_burst: Sets the maximum threshold of number of requests allowed in an initial outburst of requests per client IP. For example, when you load a web page that loads a number of resources at the same time.
• rate_limit_domain: Set the maximum threshold in number of requests per hosted pages domain per second. Set to 0 to disable this feature.
• rate_limit_domain_burst: Sets the maximum threshold of number of requests allowed in an initial outburst of requests per hosted pages domain.

Enable source-IP rate limits

Introduced in GitLab 14.5.

1. Set rate limits in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['rate_limit_source_ip'] = 20.0
   gitlab_pages['rate_limit_source_ip_burst'] = 600

2. To reject requests that exceed the specified limits, enable the FF_ENFORCE_IP_RATE_LIMITS feature flag in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['env'] = {'FF_ENFORCE_IP_RATE_LIMITS' => 'true'}

3. Reconfigure GitLab.

Enable domain rate limits

Introduced in GitLab 14.7.

1. Set rate limits in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['rate_limit_domain'] = 1000
   gitlab_pages['rate_limit_domain_burst'] = 5000

2. To reject requests that exceed the specified limits, enable the FF_ENFORCE_DOMAIN_RATE_LIMITS feature flag in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['env'] = {'FF_ENFORCE_DOMAIN_RATE_LIMITS' => 'true'}

3. Reconfigure GitLab.

Troubleshooting

How to see GitLab Pages logs

You can see Pages daemon logs by running:

sudo gitlab-ctl tail gitlab-pages

You can also find the log file in /var/log/gitlab/gitlab-pages/current.

unsupported protocol scheme \"\""

If you see the following error:

{"error":"failed to connect to internal Pages API: Get \"/api/v4/internal/pages/status\": unsupported protocol scheme \"\"","level":"warning","msg":"attempted to connect to the API","time":"2021-06-23T20:03:30Z"}

It means you didn't set the HTTP(S) protocol scheme in the Pages server settings. To fix it:

1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['gitlab_server'] = "https://<your_pages_domain_name>"
   gitlab_pages['internal_gitlab_server'] = "https://<your_pages_domain_name>"

2. Reconfigure GitLab:

   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

502 error when connecting to GitLab Pages proxy when server does not listen over IPv6

In some cases, NGINX might default to using IPv6 to connect to the GitLab Pages service even when the server does not listen over IPv6. You can identify when this is happening if you see something similar to the log entry below in the gitlab_pages_error.log:

2020/02/24 16:32:05 [error] 112654#0: *4982804 connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream, client: 123.123.123.123, server: ~^(?<group>.*)\.pages\.example\.com$, request: "GET /-/group/project/-/jobs/1234/artifacts/artifact.txt HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://[::1]:8090//-/group/project/-/jobs/1234/artifacts/artifact.txt", host: "group.example.com"

To resolve this, set an explicit IP and port for the GitLab Pages listen_proxy setting to define the explicit address that the GitLab Pages daemon should listen on:

gitlab_pages['listen_proxy'] = '127.0.0.1:8090'

Intermittent 502 errors or after a few days

If you run Pages on a system that uses systemd and tmpfiles.d, you may encounter intermittent 502 errors trying to serve Pages with an error similar to:

dial tcp: lookup gitlab.example.com on [::1]:53: dial udp [::1]:53: connect: no route to host"

GitLab Pages creates a bind mount inside /tmp/gitlab-pages-* that includes files like /etc/hosts. However, systemd may clean the /tmp/ directory on a regular basis so the DNS configuration may be lost.

To stop systemd from cleaning the Pages related content:

1. Tell tmpfiles.d to not remove the Pages /tmp directory:

   echo 'x /tmp/gitlab-pages-*' >> /etc/tmpfiles.d/gitlab-pages-jail.conf

2. Restart GitLab Pages:

   sudo gitlab-ctl restart gitlab-pages

Unable to access GitLab Pages

If you can't access your GitLab Pages (such as receiving 502 Bad Gateway errors, or a login loop) and in your Pages log shows this error:

"error":"retrieval context done: context deadline exceeded","host":"root.docs-cit.otenet.gr","level":"error","msg":"could not fetch domain information from a source"

1. Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['internal_gitlab_server'] = 'http://localhost:8080'

2. Restart GitLab Pages:

   sudo gitlab-ctl restart gitlab-pages

404 error after promoting a Geo secondary to a primary node

Pages files are not among the supported data types for replication in Geo. After a secondary node is promoted to a primary node, attempts to access a Pages site result in a 404 Not Found error.

It is possible to copy the subfolders and files in the Pages path to the new primary node to resolve this. For example, you can adapt the rsync strategy from the moving repositories documentation. Alternatively, run the CI pipelines of those projects that contain a pages job again.

404 or 500 error when accessing GitLab Pages in a Geo setup

Pages sites are only available on the primary Geo site, while the codebase of the project is available on all sites.

If you try to access a Pages page on a secondary site, a 404 or 500 HTTP code is returned depending on the access control.

Read more which features don't support Geo replication/verification.

Failed to connect to the internal GitLab API

If you see the following error:

ERRO[0010] Failed to connect to the internal GitLab API after 0.50s  error="failed to connect to internal Pages API: HTTP status: 401"

If you are Running GitLab Pages on a separate server you must copy the /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json file from the GitLab server to the Pages server after upgrading to GitLab 13.3, as described in that section.

Other reasons may include network connectivity issues between your GitLab server and your Pages server such as firewall configurations or closed ports. For example, if there is a connection timeout:

error="failed to connect to internal Pages API: Get \"https://gitlab.example.com:3000/api/v4/internal/pages/status\": net/http: request canceled while waiting for connection (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)"

Pages cannot communicate with an instance of the GitLab API

If you use the default value for domain_config_source=auto and run multiple instances of GitLab Pages, you may see intermittent 502 error responses while serving Pages content. You may also see the following warning in the Pages logs:

WARN[0010] Pages cannot communicate with an instance of the GitLab API. Please sync your gitlab-secrets.json file https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages/-/issues/535#workaround. error="pages endpoint unauthorized"

This can happen if your gitlab-secrets.json file is out of date between GitLab Rails and GitLab Pages. Follow steps 8-10 of Running GitLab Pages on a separate server, in all of your GitLab Pages instances.

Intermittent 502 errors when using an AWS Network Load Balancer and GitLab Pages

Connections will time out when using a Network Load Balancer with client IP preservation enabled and the request is looped back to the source server. This can happen to GitLab instances with multiple servers running both the core GitLab application and GitLab Pages. This can also happen when a single container is running both the core GitLab application and GitLab Pages.

AWS recommends using an IP target type to resolve this issue.

Turning off client IP preservation may resolve this issue when the core GitLab application and GitLab Pages run on the same host or container.

500 error with securecookie: failed to generate random iv and Failed to save the session

This problem most likely results from an out-dated operating system. The Pages daemon uses the securecookie library to get random strings via crypto/rand in Go. This requires the getrandom system call or /dev/urandom to be available on the host OS. Upgrading to an officially supported operating system is recommended.

The requested scope is invalid, malformed, or unknown

This problem comes from the permissions of the GitLab Pages OAuth application. To fix it:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Applications > GitLab Pages.
3. Edit the application.
4. Under Scopes, ensure that the api scope is selected.
5. Save your changes.

When running a separate Pages server, this setting needs to be configured on the main GitLab server.

Workaround in case no wildcard DNS entry can be set

If the wildcard DNS prerequisite can't be met, you can still use GitLab Pages in a limited fashion:

1. Move all projects you need to use Pages with into a single group namespace, for example pages.
2. Configure a DNS entry without the *.-wildcard, for example pages.example.io.
3. Configure pages_external_url http://example.io/ in your gitlab.rb file. Omit the group namespace here, because it automatically is prepended by GitLab.

Pages daemon fails with permission denied errors

If /tmp is mounted with noexec, the Pages daemon fails to start with an error like:

{"error":"fork/exec /gitlab-pages: permission denied","level":"fatal","msg":"could not create pages daemon","time":"2021-02-02T21:54:34Z"}

In this case, change TMPDIR to a location that is not mounted with noexec. Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

gitlab_pages['env'] = {'TMPDIR' => '<new_tmp_path>'}

Once added, reconfigure with sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure and restart GitLab with sudo gitlab-ctl restart.

The redirect URI included is not valid. when using Pages Access Control

You may see this error if pages_external_url was updated at some point of time. Verify the following:

1. The Callback URL/Redirect URI in the GitLab Pages System OAuth application is using the protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) that pages_external_url is configured to use.
2. The domain and path components of Redirect URI are valid: they should look like projects.<pages_external_url>/auth.

500 error cannot serve from disk

If you get a 500 response from Pages and encounter an error similar to:

ERRO[0145] cannot serve from disk                        error="gitlab: disk access is disabled via enable-disk=false" project_id=27 source_path="file:///shared/pages/@hashed/67/06/670671cd97404156226e507973f2ab8330d3022ca96e0c93bdbdb320c41adcaf/pages_deployments/14/artifacts.zip" source_type=zip

It means that GitLab Rails is telling GitLab Pages to serve content from a location on disk, however, GitLab Pages was configured to disable disk access.

To enable disk access:

1. Enable disk access for GitLab Pages in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['enable_disk'] = true

2. Reconfigure GitLab.

httprange: new resource 403

If you see an error similar to:

{"error":"httprange: new resource 403: \"403 Forbidden\"","host":"root.pages.example.com","level":"error","msg":"vfs.Root","path":"/pages1/","time":"2021-06-10T08:45:19Z"}

And you run pages on the separate server syncing files via NFS, it may mean that the shared pages directory is mounted on a different path on the main GitLab server and the GitLab Pages server.

In that case, it's highly recommended you to configure object storage and migrate any existing pages data to it.

Alternatively, you can mount the GitLab Pages shared directory to the same path on both servers.

GitLab Pages doesn't work after upgrading to GitLab 14.0 or above

GitLab 14.0 introduces a number of changes to GitLab Pages which may require manual intervention.

1. Firstly follow the migration guide.
2. Try to upgrade to GitLab 14.3 or above. Some of the issues were fixed in GitLab 14.1, 14.2 and 14.3.
3. If it doesn't work, see GitLab Pages logs, and if you see any errors there then search them on this page.

WARNING: In GitLab 14.0-14.2 you can temporarily enable legacy storage and configuration mechanisms.

To do that:

1. Please describe the issue you're seeing in the migration feedback issue.

2. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_pages['use_legacy_storage'] = true

3. Reconfigure GitLab.

GitLab Pages deploy job fails with error "is not a recognized provider"

If the pages job succeeds but the deploy job gives the error "is not a recognized provider":

The error message is not a recognized provider could be coming from the fog gem that GitLab uses to connect to cloud providers for object storage.

To fix that:

1. Check your gitlab.rb file. If you have gitlab_rails['pages_object_store_enabled'] enabled, but no bucket details have been configured, either:

   • Configure object storage for your Pages deployments, following the S3-compatible connection settings guide.
   • Store your deployments locally, by commenting out that line.

2. Save the changes you made to your gitlab.rb file, then reconfigure GitLab.