• Requirements
• Design Choices
• Configuration
• Installation command line options
• Chart configuration examples
  • extraEnv
  • extraEnvFrom
  • image.pullSecrets
  • livenessProbe/readinessProbe
  • tolerations
  • annotations
• External Services
  • Workhorse
• Chart settings
  • hostKeys.secret
  • authToken
  • LoadBalancer Service
  • Configuring the networkpolicy
  • Example Network Policy

Using the GitLab Shell chart

The gitlab-shell sub-chart provides an SSH server configured for Git SSH access to GitLab.

Requirements

This chart depends on access to the Workhorse services, either as part of the complete GitLab chart or provided as an external service reachable from the Kubernetes cluster this chart is deployed onto.

Design Choices

In order to easily support SSH replicas, and avoid using shared storage for the SSH authorized keys, we are using the SSH AuthorizedKeysCommand to authenticate against the GitLab authorized keys endpoint. As a result, we don’t persist or update the AuthorizedKeys file within these pods.

Configuration

The gitlab-shell chart is configured in two parts: external services, and chart settings. The port exposed through Ingress is configured with global.shell.port, and defaults to 22. The Service’s external port is also controlled by global.shell.port.

Installation command line options

Chart configuration examples

extraEnv

extraEnv allows you to expose additional environment variables in all containers in the pods.

Below is an example use of extraEnv:

extraEnv:
  SOME_KEY: some_value
  SOME_OTHER_KEY: some_other_value

When the container is started, you can confirm that the environment variables are exposed:

env | grep SOME
SOME_KEY=some_value
SOME_OTHER_KEY=some_other_value

extraEnvFrom

extraEnvFrom allows you to expose additional environment variables from other data sources in all containers in the pods.

Below is an example use of extraEnvFrom:

extraEnvFrom:
  MY_NODE_NAME:
    fieldRef:
      fieldPath: spec.nodeName
  MY_CPU_REQUEST:
    resourceFieldRef:
      containerName: test-container
      resource: requests.cpu
  SECRET_THING:
    secretKeyRef:
      name: special-secret
      key: special_token
      # optional: boolean
  CONFIG_STRING:
    configMapKeyRef:
      name: useful-config
      key: some-string
      # optional: boolean

image.pullSecrets

pullSecrets allows you to authenticate to a private registry to pull images for a pod.

Additional details about private registries and their authentication methods can be found in the Kubernetes documentation.

Below is an example use of pullSecrets:

image:
  repository: my.shell.repository
  tag: latest
  pullPolicy: Always
  pullSecrets:
  - name: my-secret-name
  - name: my-secondary-secret-name

livenessProbe/readinessProbe

deployment.livenessProbe and deployment.readinessProbe provide a mechanism to help control the termination of Pods under some scenarios.

Larger repositories benefit from tuning liveness and readiness probe times to match their typical long-running connections. Set readiness probe duration shorter than liveness probe duration to minimize potential interruptions during clone and push operations. Increase terminationGracePeriodSeconds and give these operations more time before the scheduler terminates the pod. Consider the example below as a starting point to tune GitLab Shell pods for increased stability and efficiency with larger repository workloads.

deployment:
  livenessProbe:
    initialDelaySeconds: 10
    periodSeconds: 20
    timeoutSeconds: 3
    successThreshold: 1
    failureThreshold: 10
  readinessProbe:
    initialDelaySeconds: 10
    periodSeconds: 5
    timeoutSeconds: 2
    successThreshold: 1
    failureThreshold: 3
  terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 300

Reference the official Kubernetes Documentation for additional details regarding this configuration.

tolerations

tolerations allow you schedule pods on tainted worker nodes

Below is an example use of tolerations:

tolerations:
- key: "node_label"
  operator: "Equal"
  value: "true"
  effect: "NoSchedule"
- key: "node_label"
  operator: "Equal"
  value: "true"
  effect: "NoExecute"

annotations

annotations allows you to add annotations to the GitLab Shell pods.

Below is an example use of annotations

annotations:
  kubernetes.io/example-annotation: annotation-value

External Services

This chart should be attached the Workhorse service.

Workhorse

workhorse:
  host: workhorse.example.com
  serviceName: webservice
  port: 8181

Chart settings

The following values are used to configure the GitLab Shell Pods.

hostKeys.secret

The name of the Kubernetes secret to grab the SSH host keys from. The keys in the secret must start with the key names ssh_host_ in order to be used by GitLab Shell.

authToken

GitLab Shell uses an Auth Token in its communication with Workhorse. Share the token with GitLab Shell and Workhorse using a shared Secret.

authToken:
 secret: gitlab-shell-secret
 key: secret

LoadBalancer Service

If the service.type is set to LoadBalancer, you can optionally specify service.loadBalancerIP to create the LoadBalancer with a user-specified IP (if your cloud provider supports it).

You can also optionally specify a list of service.loadBalancerSourceRanges to restrict the CIDR ranges that can access the LoadBalancer (if your cloud provider supports it).

Additional information about the LoadBalancer service type can be found in the Kubernetes documentation

service:
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerIP: 1.2.3.4
  loadBalancerSourceRanges:
  - 5.6.7.8/32
  - 10.0.0.0/8

Configuring the networkpolicy

This section controls the NetworkPolicy. This configuration is optional and is used to limit Egress and Ingress of the Pods to specific endpoints.

Example Network Policy

The gitlab-shell service requires Ingress connections for port 22 and Egress connections to various to default workhorse port 8181. This examples adds the following network policy:

• All Ingress requests from the network on TCP 0.0.0.0/0 port 2222 are allowed
• All Egress requests to the network on UDP 10.0.0.0/8 port 53 are allowed for DNS
• All Egress requests to the network on TCP 10.0.0.0/8 port 8181 are allowed for Workhorse
• All Egress requests to the network on TCP 10.0.0.0/8 port 8075 are allowed for Gitaly

Note the example provided is only an example and may not be complete

networkpolicy:
  enabled: true
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    rules:
      - from:
        - ipBlock:
            cidr: 0.0.0.0/0
        ports:
          - port: 2222
            protocol: TCP
  egress:
    enabled: true
    rules:
      - to:
        - ipBlock:
            cidr: 10.0.0.0/8
        ports:
          - port: 8181
            protocol: TCP
          - port: 8075
            protocol: TCP
          - port: 53
            protocol: UDP