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GitLab Pages administration for self-compiled installations

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NOTE: Before attempting to enable GitLab Pages, first make sure you have installed GitLab successfully.

This document explains how to configure GitLab Pages for self-compiled GitLab installations.

For more information about configuring GitLab Pages for Linux Package installations (recommended), see the Linux package documentation.

The advantage of using the Linux package installation is that it contains the latest supported version of GitLab Pages.

How GitLab Pages works

GitLab Pages makes use of the GitLab Pages daemon, a lightweight HTTP server that listens on an external IP address and provides support for custom domains and 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, you should use TCP load balancing for HTTPS. If you use TLS-termination (HTTPS-load balancing), the pages aren't able to be served with user-provided certificates. For HTTP, you can use HTTP or TCP load balancing.

In this document, we proceed assuming the first option. If you aren't supporting custom domains, a secondary IP isn't needed.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the Pages configuration, make sure that:

  • You have a separate domain to serve GitLab Pages from. In this document we assume that to be example.io.
  • You have configured a wildcard DNS record for that domain.
  • You have installed the zip and unzip packages in the same server that GitLab is installed because they are needed to compress and decompress the Pages artifacts.
  • Optional. You have a wildcard certificate for the Pages domain if you decide to serve Pages (*.example.io) under HTTPS.
  • Optional but recommended. You have configured and enabled the instance runners so your users don't have to bring their own.

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

Where example.io is the domain to serve GitLab Pages from, and 192.0.2.1 is the IP address of your GitLab instance.

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 options 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

Prerequisites:

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

This setup is the minimum 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. Install the Pages daemon:

    cd /home/git
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages.git
cd gitlab-pages
sudo -u git -H git checkout v$(</home/git/gitlab/GITLAB_PAGES_VERSION)
sudo -u git -H make

  2. Go to the GitLab installation directory:

    cd /home/git/gitlab

  3. Edit gitlab.yml and under the pages setting, set enabled to true and the host to the FQDN to serve GitLab Pages from:

    ## GitLab Pages
pages:
  enabled: true
  # The location where pages are stored (default: shared/pages).
  # path: shared/pages

  host: example.io
  access_control: false
  port: 8090
  https: false
  artifacts_server: false
  external_http: ["127.0.0.1:8090"]
  secret_file: /home/git/gitlab/gitlab-pages-secret

  4. Add the following configuration file to /home/git/gitlab-pages/gitlab-pages.conf, and be sure to change example.io to the FQDN from which you want to serve GitLab Pages and gitlab.example.com to the URL of your GitLab instance:

    listen-http=:8090
pages-root=/home/git/gitlab/shared/pages
api-secret-key=/home/git/gitlab/gitlab-pages-secret
pages-domain=example.io
internal-gitlab-server=https://gitlab.example.com

    You may use an http address, when running GitLab Pages and GitLab on the same host. If you use https and use a self-signed certificate, be sure to make your custom CA available to GitLab Pages. For example, you can do this by setting the SSL_CERT_DIR environment variable.

  5. Add the secret API key:

    sudo -u git -H openssl rand -base64 32 > /home/git/gitlab/gitlab-pages-secret

  6. To enable the pages daemon:

    • If your system uses systemd as init, run:

      sudo systemctl edit gitlab.target

      In the editor that opens, add the following and save the file:

      [Unit]
Wants=gitlab-pages.service

    • If your system uses SysV init instead, edit /etc/default/gitlab and set gitlab_pages_enabled to true:

      gitlab_pages_enabled=true

  7. Copy the gitlab-pages NGINX configuration file:

    sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab-pages /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab-pages.conf
sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-{available,enabled}/gitlab-pages.conf

  8. Restart NGINX.

  9. Restart GitLab.

Wildcard domains with TLS support

Prerequisites:

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. Install the Pages daemon:

    cd /home/git
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages.git
cd gitlab-pages
sudo -u git -H git checkout v$(</home/git/gitlab/GITLAB_PAGES_VERSION)
sudo -u git -H make

  2. In gitlab.yml, set the port to 443 and https to true:

    ## GitLab Pages
pages:
  enabled: true
  # The location where pages are stored (default: shared/pages).
  # path: shared/pages

  host: example.io
  port: 443
  https: true

  3. Edit /etc/default/gitlab and set gitlab_pages_enabled to true in order to enable the pages daemon. In gitlab_pages_options the -pages-domain must match the host setting that you set above. The -root-cert and -root-key settings are the wildcard TLS certificates of the example.io domain:

    gitlab_pages_enabled=true
gitlab_pages_options="-pages-domain example.io -pages-root $app_root/shared/pages -listen-proxy 127.0.0.1:8090 -root-cert /path/to/example.io.crt -root-key /path/to/example.io.key"

  4. Copy the gitlab-pages-ssl NGINX configuration file:

    sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab-pages-ssl /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab-pages-ssl.conf
sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-{available,enabled}/gitlab-pages-ssl.conf

  5. Restart NGINX.

  6. Restart GitLab.

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.

Custom domains

Prerequisites:

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. Install the Pages daemon:

    cd /home/git
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages.git
cd gitlab-pages
sudo -u git -H git checkout v$(</home/git/gitlab/GITLAB_PAGES_VERSION)
sudo -u git -H make

  2. Edit gitlab.yml to look like the example below. You need to change the host to the FQDN to serve GitLab Pages from. Set external_http to the secondary IP on which the pages daemon listens for connections:

    pages:
  enabled: true
  # The location where pages are stored (default: shared/pages).
  # path: shared/pages

  host: example.io
  port: 80
  https: false

  external_http: 192.0.2.2:80

  3. To enable the daemon, edit /etc/default/gitlab and set gitlab_pages_enabled to true. In gitlab_pages_options, the value for -pages-domain must match the host and -listen-http must match the external_http:

    gitlab_pages_enabled=true
gitlab_pages_options="-pages-domain example.io -pages-root $app_root/shared/pages -listen-proxy 127.0.0.1:8090 -listen-http 192.0.2.2:80"

  4. Copy the gitlab-pages-ssl NGINX configuration file:

    sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab-pages /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab-pages.conf
sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-{available,enabled}/gitlab-pages.conf

  5. Edit all GitLab related configurations in /etc/nginx/site-available/ and replace 0.0.0.0 with 192.0.2.1, where 192.0.2.1 the primary IP where GitLab listens to.

  6. Restart NGINX.

  7. Restart GitLab.

Custom domains with TLS support

Prerequisites:

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. Install the Pages daemon:

    cd /home/git
sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages.git
cd gitlab-pages
sudo -u git -H git checkout v$(</home/git/gitlab/GITLAB_PAGES_VERSION)
sudo -u git -H make

  2. Edit gitlab.yml to look like the example below. You need to change the host to the FQDN to serve GitLab Pages from. Set external_http and external_https to the secondary IP on which the pages daemon listens for connections:

    ## GitLab Pages
pages:
  enabled: true
  # The location where pages are stored (default: shared/pages).
  # path: shared/pages

  host: example.io
  port: 443
  https: true

  external_http: 192.0.2.2:80
  external_https: 192.0.2.2:443

  3. Edit /etc/default/gitlab and set gitlab_pages_enabled to true in order to enable the pages daemon. In gitlab_pages_options, you must match the -pages-domain with host, -listen-http with external_http, and -listen-https with external_https settings. The -root-cert and -root-key settings are the wildcard TLS certificates of the example.io domain:

    gitlab_pages_enabled=true
gitlab_pages_options="-pages-domain example.io -pages-root $app_root/shared/pages -listen-proxy 127.0.0.1:8090 -listen-http 192.0.2.2:80 -listen-https 192.0.2.2:443 -root-cert /path/to/example.io.crt -root-key /path/to/example.io.key"

  4. Copy the gitlab-pages-ssl NGINX configuration file:

    sudo cp lib/support/nginx/gitlab-pages-ssl /etc/nginx/sites-available/gitlab-pages-ssl.conf
sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-{available,enabled}/gitlab-pages-ssl.conf

  5. Edit all GitLab related configurations in /etc/nginx/site-available/ and replace 0.0.0.0 with 192.0.2.1, where 192.0.2.1 the primary IP where GitLab listens to.

  6. Restart NGINX.

  7. Restart GitLab.

NGINX caveats

NOTE: The following information applies only to self-compiled installations.

Be extra careful when setting up the domain name in the NGINX configuration. You must not remove the backslashes.

If your GitLab Pages domain is example.io, replace:

server_name ~^.*\.YOUR_GITLAB_PAGES\.DOMAIN$;

with:

server_name ~^.*\.example\.io$;

If you are using a subdomain, make sure to escape all dots (.) except from the first one with a backslash (). For example pages.example.io would be:

server_name ~^.*\.pages\.example\.io$;

Access control

GitLab Pages access control can be configured per project. Access to a Pages site can 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.

Access Control parameters for Pages are set in a configuration file, which by convention is named gitlab-pages-config. The configuration file is passed to pages using the -config flag or CONFIG environment variable.

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

  1. Modify your config/gitlab.yml file:

    pages:
  access_control: true

  2. Restart GitLab.

  3. Create a new system OAuth application. This should be called GitLab Pages and have a Redirect URL of https://projects.example.io/auth. It does not need to be a "trusted" application, but it does need the api scope.

  4. Start the Pages daemon by passing a configuration file with the following arguments:

      auth-client-id=<OAuth Application ID generated by GitLab>
  auth-client-secret=<OAuth code generated by GitLab>
  auth-redirect-uri='http://projects.example.io/auth'
  auth-secret=<40 random hex characters>
  auth-server=<URL of the GitLab instance>

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

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 /home/git/gitlab/shared/pages. If you wish to store them in another location you must set it up in gitlab.yml under the pages section:

    pages:
  enabled: true
  # The location where pages are stored (default: shared/pages).
  path: /mnt/storage/pages

  2. Restart GitLab.

Set maximum Pages size

The default for the maximum size of unpacked archives per project is 100 MB.

To change this value:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
  2. Select Settings > Preferences.
  3. Expand Pages.
  4. Update the value for Maximum size of pages (MB).

Backup

Pages are part of the regular backup so there is nothing to configure.

Security

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