GitLab Git Large File Storage (LFS) Administration
- Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
- Offering: GitLab Self-Managed
This page contains information about configuring Git LFS on GitLab Self-Managed. For user documentation about Git LFS, see Git Large File Storage.
Prerequisites:
- Users need to install Git LFS client version 1.0.1 or later.
Enable or disable LFS
LFS is enabled by default. To disable it:
Edit
/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
:# Change to true to enable lfs - enabled by default if not defined gitlab_rails['lfs_enabled'] = false
Save the file and reconfigure GitLab:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
Change local storage path
Git LFS objects can be large in size. By default, they are stored on the server GitLab is installed on.
For Docker installations, you can change the path where your data is mounted. For the Helm chart, use object storage.
To change the default local storage path location:
Edit
/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
:# /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/lfs-objects by default. gitlab_rails['lfs_storage_path'] = "/mnt/storage/lfs-objects"
Save the file and reconfigure GitLab:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
Storing LFS objects in remote object storage
You can store LFS objects in remote object storage. This allows you to reduce reads and writes to the local disk, and free up disk space significantly.
You should use the consolidated object storage settings.
Migrating to object storage
You can migrate the LFS objects from local storage to object storage. The processing is done in the background and requires no downtime.
Migrate the LFS objects:
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:lfs:migrate
Optional. Track the progress and verify that all job LFS objects migrated successfully using the PostgreSQL console.
Open a PostgreSQL console:
sudo gitlab-psql
Verify that all LFS files migrated to object storage with the following SQL query. The number of
objectstg
should be the same astotal
: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 lfs_objects; total | filesystem | objectstg ------+------------+----------- 2409 | 0 | 2409
Verify that there are no files on disk in the
lfs-objects
directory:sudo find /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/lfs-objects -type f | grep -v tmp | wc -l
Migrating back to local storage
For the Helm chart, you should use object storage.
To migrate back to local storage:
Migrate the LFS objects:
sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:lfs:migrate_to_local
Edit
/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
and disable object storage for LFS objects:gitlab_rails['object_store']['objects']['lfs']['enabled'] = false
Save the file and reconfigure GitLab:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
Pure SSH transfer protocol
This feature is affected by a known issue. If you clone a repository with multiple Git LFS objects using the pure SSH protocol, the client might crash due to a nil
pointer reference.
git-lfs
3.0.0
released support for using SSH as the transfer protocol instead of HTTP.
SSH is handled transparently by the git-lfs
command line tool.
When pure SSH protocol support is enabled and git
is configured to use SSH,
all LFS operations happen over SSH. For example, when the Git remote is
git@gitlab.com:gitlab-org/gitlab.git
. You can’t configure git
and git-lfs
to use different protocols. From version 3.0, git-lfs
attempts to use the pure
SSH protocol initially and, if support is not enabled or available, it falls back
to using HTTP.
Prerequisites:
- The
git-lfs
version must be v3.5.1 or higher.
To switch Git LFS to use pure SSH protocol:
Edit
/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
:gitlab_shell['lfs_pure_ssh_protocol'] = true
Save the file and reconfigure GitLab:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
Storage statistics
You can see the total storage used for LFS objects for groups and projects in:
Related topics
- Blog post: Getting started with Git LFS
- User documentation: Git Large File Storage (LFS)
- Git LFS developer information
Troubleshooting
Missing LFS objects
An error about a missing LFS object may occur in either of these situations:
When migrating LFS objects from disk to object storage, with error messages like:
ERROR -- : Failed to transfer LFS object 006622269c61b41bf14a22bbe0e43be3acf86a4a446afb4250c3794ea47541a7 with error: No such file or directory @ rb_sysopen - /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/lfs-objects/00/66/22269c61b41bf14a22bbe0e43be3acf86a4a446afb4250c3794ea47541a7
(Line breaks have been added for legibility.)
When running the integrity check for LFS objects with the
VERBOSE=1
parameter.
The database can have records for LFS objects which are not on disk. The database entry may prevent a new copy of the object from being pushed. To delete these references:
Query the object that’s reported as missing in the rails console, to return a file path:
lfs_object = LfsObject.find_by(oid: '006622269c61b41bf14a22bbe0e43be3acf86a4a446afb4250c3794ea47541a7') lfs_object.file.path
Check on disk or object storage if it exists:
ls -al /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/lfs-objects/00/66/22269c61b41bf14a22bbe0e43be3acf86a4a446afb4250c3794ea47541a7
If the file is not present, remove the database records with the Rails console:
# First delete the parent records and then destroy the record itself lfs_object.lfs_objects_projects.destroy_all lfs_object.destroy
LFS commands fail on TLS v1.3 server
If you configure GitLab to disable TLS v1.2 and only enable TLS v1.3 connections, LFS operations require a Git LFS client version 2.11.0 or later. If you use a Git LFS client earlier than version 2.11.0, GitLab displays an error:
batch response: Post https://username:***@gitlab.example.com/tool/releases.git/info/lfs/objects/batch: remote error: tls: protocol version not supported
error: failed to fetch some objects from 'https://username:[MASKED]@gitlab.example.com/tool/releases.git/info/lfs'
When using GitLab CI over a TLS v1.3 configured GitLab server, you must upgrade to GitLab Runner 13.2.0 or later to receive an updated Git LFS client version with the included GitLab Runner Helper image.
To check an installed Git LFS client’s version, run this command:
git lfs version
Connection refused
errors
If you push or mirror LFS objects and receive errors like the following:
dial tcp <IP>:443: connect: connection refused
Connection refused - connect(2) for \"<target-or-proxy-IP>\" port 443
a firewall or proxy rule may be terminating the connection.
If connection checks with standard Unix tools or manual Git pushes are successful, the rule may be related to the size of the request.
Error viewing a PDF file
When LFS has been configured with object storage and proxy_download
set to
false
, you may see an error when previewing a PDF file from the Web browser:
An error occurred while loading the file. Please try again later.
This occurs due to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) restrictions: the browser attempts to load the PDF from object storage, but the object storage provider rejects the request because the GitLab domain differs from the object storage domain.
To fix this issue, configure your object storage provider’s CORS settings to allow the GitLab domain. See the following documentation for more details:
Fork operation stuck on Forking in progress
message
If you are forking a project with multiple LFS files, the operation might get stuck with a Forking in progress
message.
If you encounter this, follow these steps to diagnose and resolve the issue:
Check your exceptions_json.log file for the following error message:
"error_message": "Unable to fork project 12345 for repository @hashed/11/22/encoded-path -> @hashed/33/44/encoded-new-path: Source project has too many LFS objects"
This error indicates that you’ve reached the default limit of 100,000 LFS files, as described in issue #476693.
Increase the value of the
GITLAB_LFS_MAX_OID_TO_FETCH
variable:Open the configuration file
/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
.Add or update the variable:
gitlab_rails['env'] = { "GITLAB_LFS_MAX_OID_TO_FETCH" => "NEW_VALUE" }
Replace
NEW_VALUE
with a number based on your requirements.
Apply the changes. Run:
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
For additional information, see Reconfigure a Linux package installation.
Repeat the fork operation.
If you are using GitLab Helm Chart, use extraEnv to configure the environment variable GITLAB_LFS_MAX_OID_TO_FETCH
.
Known limitations
- Only compatible with the Git LFS client versions 1.1.0 and later, or 1.0.2.
- The storage statistics count each LFS object for every project linking to it.
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