• Overview
• Prerequisites
  • Add the domain to the Public Suffix List
  • DNS configuration
    • Custom domains
• Configuration
  • Wildcard domains
  • Wildcard domains with TLS support
  • Additional configuration for Docker container
  • Global settings
• Advanced configuration
  • Custom domains
  • Custom domains with TLS support
  • Custom domain verification
  • Let’s Encrypt integration
  • Access control
    • Using Pages with reduced authentication scope
    • Disabling public access to all Pages websites
  • Running behind a proxy
  • Using a custom Certificate Authority (CA)
  • Zip serving and cache configuration
    • Zip cache refresh example
• Activate verbose logging for daemon
• Propagating the correlation ID
• Change storage path
• Configure listener for reverse proxy requests
  • Override maximum pages size per project or group
• Running GitLab Pages on a separate server
• Domain source configuration
  • Domain source configuration before 14.0
  • GitLab API cache configuration
• Using object storage
  • Object storage settings
    • S3-compatible connection settings
• ZIP storage
  • Migrate legacy storage to ZIP storage
  • Rolling back ZIP migration
  • Migrate Pages deployments to object storage
  • Rolling Pages deployments back to local storage
  • Disable Pages local storage
• Migrate GitLab Pages to 14.0
• Backup
• Security
• Troubleshooting
  • How to see GitLab Pages logs
  • open /etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem: permission denied
  • dial tcp: lookup gitlab.example.com and x509: certificate signed by unknown authority
  • 502 error when connecting to GitLab Pages proxy when server does not listen over IPv6
  • Intermittent 502 errors or after a few days
  • 404 error after transferring the project to a different group or user, or changing project path
  • 404 error after promoting a Geo secondary to a primary node
  • Failed to connect to the internal GitLab API
  • Pages cannot communicate with an instance of the GitLab API
  • 500 error with securecookie: failed to generate random iv and Failed to save the session
  • The requested scope is invalid, malformed, or unknown
  • Workaround in case no wildcard DNS entry can be set
  • Pages daemon fails with permission denied errors
  • The redirect URI included is not valid. when using Pages Access Control
  • 500 error cannot serve from disk
  • GitLab Pages doesn’t work after upgrading to GitLab 14.0 or above

GitLab Pages administration

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

Overview

GitLab Pages makes use of the GitLab Pages daemon, a simple 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 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 note that 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	Yes
   example.com	pages.example.com	No
   gitlab.example.com	pages.example.com	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. (Only for custom domains) Have a secondary IP.

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 you need to 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.

Custom domains

If support for custom domains is needed, the Pages root domain and its subdomains should point to the secondary IP (which is dedicated for the Pages daemon). <namespace>.<pages root domain> should point at Pages directly. Without this, users aren’t able to 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.

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 since that is needed in all configurations.

Wildcard domains

Requirements:

• Wildcard DNS setup

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

This 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:

   pages_external_url 'http://example.io'
   

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:

   pages_external_url 'https://example.io'
   
   pages_nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true
   

3. If you haven’t named your certificate and key example.io.crt and example.io.key then you’ll need to 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.

Additional configuration for Docker container

The GitLab Pages daemon doesn’t have permissions to bind mounts when it runs in a Docker container. To overcome this issue, you must change the chroot behavior:

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

2. Set the inplace_chroot to true for GitLab Pages:

   gitlab_pages['inplace_chroot'] = true
   

3. 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 need 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:

   pages_external_url "http://example.io"
   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:

   pages_external_url "https://example.io"
   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.

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

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, you must:

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 as shown below.
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.

Using Pages with reduced authentication scope

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

Disabling public access to all Pages websites

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 useful to preserve 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.

Zip serving and cache configuration

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.

Activate verbose logging for daemon

Verbose logging was introduced in Omnibus GitLab 11.1.

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

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.

Override maximum pages size per project or group

To override the global maximum pages size for a specific project:

1. Go to your project’s Settings > Pages page.
2. Edit the Maximum size of pages.
3. Click Save changes.

To override the global maximum pages size for a specific group:

1. Go to your group’s Settings > General page and expand Pages.
2. Edit the Maximum size of pages.
3. Click 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:

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

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

6. Create an NFS share on the Pages server and configure this share to allow access from your main GitLab server. Note that the example there is more general and shares several sub-directories from /home to several /nfs/home mount points. For our Pages-specific example here, we instead share only the default GitLab Pages folder /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages from the Pages server and we mount it to /mnt/pages on the GitLab server. Therefore, omit “Step 4” there.

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>'
   

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

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

9. Copy the /etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json file from the GitLab server to the Pages server, for example via the NFS share.

   # 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
   

10. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

11. 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
    gitlab_rails['pages_path'] = "/mnt/pages"
    

12. Reconfigure GitLab 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

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 will make transition 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

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.

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

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.

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 the 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

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:

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

Existing Pages deployments objects (which store ZIP archives) can similarly be migrated to object storage, if you’ve been having them stored locally.

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

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:deployments:migrate_to_object_storage

Rolling Pages deployments back to local storage

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

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:pages:deployments:migrate_to_local

Disable Pages local storage

If you use object storage, disable local storage:

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.

Migrate GitLab Pages to 14.0

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

If you run GitLab on a single server, then most likely you will not notice any problem after upgrading to GitLab 14.0, but it may be safer to follow the steps anyway. If you run GitLab on a single server, then most likely the upgrade process to 14.0 will go smoothly for you. 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.

To migrate GitLab Pages to GitLab 14.0:

1. If your current GitLab version is lower than 13.12, then you first need to upgrade to 13.12. Upgrading directly to 14.0 may cause downtime for some web-sites hosted on GitLab Pages until you finish the following steps.
2. 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.
3. If you want to store your pages content in the 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.
4. Migrate legacy storage to ZIP 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.

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.

open /etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem: permission denied

GitLab Pages runs inside a chroot jail, usually in a uniquely numbered directory like /tmp/gitlab-pages-*.

Within the jail, a bundle of trusted certificates is provided at /etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem. It’s copied there from /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem as part of starting up Pages.

If the permissions on the source file are incorrect (they should be 0644), then the file inside the chroot jail is also wrong.

Pages logs errors in /var/log/gitlab/gitlab-pages/current like:

x509: failed to load system roots and no roots provided
open /etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem: permission denied

The use of a chroot jail makes this error misleading, as it is not referring to /etc/ssl on the root file system.

The fix is to correct the source file permissions and restart Pages:

sudo chmod 644 /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem
sudo gitlab-ctl restart gitlab-pages

dial tcp: lookup gitlab.example.com and x509: certificate signed by unknown authority

When setting both inplace_chroot and access_control to true, you might encounter errors like:

dial tcp: lookup gitlab.example.com on [::1]:53: dial udp [::1]:53: connect: cannot assign requested address

Or:

open /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem: no such file or directory
x509: certificate signed by unknown authority

The reason for those errors is that the files resolv.conf and ca-bundle.pem are missing inside the chroot. The fix is to copy the host’s /etc/resolv.conf and the GitLab certificate bundle inside the chroot:

sudo mkdir -p /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/etc/ssl
sudo mkdir -p /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/

sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/etc
sudo cp /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/
sudo cp /opt/gitlab/embedded/ssl/certs/cacert.pem /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem

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
   

404 error after transferring the project to a different group or user, or changing project path

If you encounter a 404 Not Found error a Pages site after transferring a project to another group or user, or changing project path, you must trigger a domain configuration update for Pages. To do so, write something in the .update file. The Pages daemon monitors for changes to this file, and reloads the configuration when changes occur.

Use this example to fix a 404 Not Found error after transferring a project or changing a project path with Pages:

date > /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/.update

If you’ve customized the Pages storage path, adjust the command above to use your custom path.

404 error after promoting a Geo secondary to a primary node

These are due to the Pages files not being among the supported data types.

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.

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.

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

Verify that 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.

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.

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. If it doesn’t work, see GitLab Pages logs, and if you see any errors there then search them on this page.

To do that:

1. Please describe the issue you’re seeing in here.

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

   gitlab_pages['use_legacy_storage'] = true
   

3. Reconfigure GitLab.