Environment Setup | Users

Administrator user

E2E test framework utilizes administrator user for certain resource creation, like user or for changing certain instance level settings. It is not necessary to explicitly configure administrator user for environments used in test-pipelines because these environments automatically create administrator user with known default credentials and personal access token. If administrator user requires different credentials, these can be configured through following environment variables:

  • GITLAB_ADMIN_USERNAME
  • GITLAB_ADMIN_PASSWORD
  • GITLAB_QA_ADMIN_ACCESS_TOKEN

Administrator user can be accessed via global accessor method QA::Runtime::UserStore.admin_user.

Test user

All tests running against one of the test-pipelines automatically create a new test user for each test. Resource instance of this user is then made globally available via QA::Runtime::UserStore.test_user accessor method. All user related actions like signing in or creating other objects via API by default will use this user’s credentials or personal access token. Automatic user creation is performed by using administrator user personal access token which is pre-seeded automatically on all ephemeral environments used in test-pipelines.

Using single user

It is advised to not run all tests using single user but certain environments impose limitations for generating new user for each test. In such case, test user is initialized using credentials from environments variables - GITLAB_USERNAME and GITLAB_PASSWORD. Additionally, to provide a pre-configured personal access token for test user, GITLAB_QA_ACCESS_TOKEN variable can be set.

No admin environments

Certain environments might not have administrator user and have no ability to create one. For tests to work when running against such environment, test user must be configured via environment variables mentioned in Using single user section. Additionally, to prevent test framework from trying to initialize administrator user, environment variable QA_NO_ADMIN_ENV must be set to true.

Disable email verification

If email verification is enabled on the test environment (via the require_email_verification feature flag), a user cannot log in under certain conditions (e.g., logging in the first time from a new location) unless they enter a verification code that is sent to their email address.

To disable email verification you can disable the require_email_verification feature flag, which will disable email verification for all users on the instance. Alternatively, you can skip verification for individual users by enabling the skip_require_email_verification feature flag for that user.