GitLab.com settings

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com

This page contains information about the settings that are used on GitLab.com, available to GitLab SaaS customers.

See some of these settings on the instance configuration page of GitLab.com.

Email confirmation

GitLab.com has the:

• email_confirmation_setting setting set to Hard.
• unconfirmed_users_delete_after_days setting set to three days.

Password requirements

GitLab.com has the following requirements for passwords on new accounts and password changes:

• Minimum character length 8 characters.
• Maximum character length 128 characters.
• All characters are accepted. For example, ~, !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (), [], _, +, =, and -.

SSH key restrictions

GitLab.com uses the default SSH key restrictions.

SSH host keys fingerprints

Go to the current instance configuration to see the SSH host key fingerprints on GitLab.com.

1. Sign in to GitLab.
2. On the left sidebar, select Help ({question-o}) > Help.
3. On the Help page, select Check the current instance configuration.

In the instance configuration, you see the SSH host key fingerprints:

The first time you connect to a GitLab.com repository, one of these keys is displayed in the output.

SSH known_hosts entries

Add the following to .ssh/known_hosts to skip manual fingerprint confirmation in SSH:

gitlab.com ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIAfuCHKVTjquxvt6CM6tdG4SLp1Btn/nOeHHE5UOzRdf
gitlab.com ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCsj2bNKTBSpIYDEGk9KxsGh3mySTRgMtXL583qmBpzeQ+jqCMRgBqB98u3z++J1sKlXHWfM9dyhSevkMwSbhoR8XIq/U0tCNyokEi/ueaBMCvbcTHhO7FcwzY92WK4Yt0aGROY5qX2UKSeOvuP4D6TPqKF1onrSzH9bx9XUf2lEdWT/ia1NEKjunUqu1xOB/StKDHMoX4/OKyIzuS0q/T1zOATthvasJFoPrAjkohTyaDUz2LN5JoH839hViyEG82yB+MjcFV5MU3N1l1QL3cVUCh93xSaua1N85qivl+siMkPGbO5xR/En4iEY6K2XPASUEMaieWVNTRCtJ4S8H+9
gitlab.com ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 AAAAE2VjZHNhLXNoYTItbmlzdHAyNTYAAAAIbmlzdHAyNTYAAABBBFSMqzJeV9rUzU4kWitGjeR4PWSa29SPqJ1fVkhtj3Hw9xjLVXVYrU9QlYWrOLXBpQ6KWjbjTDTdDkoohFzgbEY=

Mail configuration

GitLab.com sends emails from the mg.gitlab.com domain by using Mailgun, and has its own dedicated IP addresses:

• 23.253.183.236
• 69.72.35.190
• 69.72.44.107
• 159.135.226.146
• 161.38.202.219
• 192.237.158.143
• 192.237.159.239
• 198.61.254.136
• 198.61.254.160
• 209.61.151.122

The IP addresses for mg.gitlab.com are subject to change at any time.

Service Desk alias email address

On GitLab.com, there's a mailbox configured for Service Desk with the email address: contact-project+%{key}@incoming.gitlab.com. To use this mailbox, configure the custom suffix in project settings.

Backups

See our backup strategy.

To back up an entire project on GitLab.com, you can export it either:

• Through the UI.
• Through the API. You can also use the API to programmatically upload exports to a storage platform, such as Amazon S3.

With exports, be aware of what is and is not included in a project export.

GitLab is built on Git, so you can back up just the repository of a project by cloning it to another computer. Similarly, you can clone a project's wiki to back it up. All files uploaded after August 22, 2020 are included when cloning.

Delayed group deletion

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com

After May 08, 2023, all groups have delayed deletion enabled by default.

Groups are permanently deleted after a seven-day delay.

If you are on the Free tier, your groups are immediately deleted, and you will not be able to restore them.

You can view and restore groups marked for deletion.

Delayed project deletion

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com

After May 08, 2023, all groups have delayed project deletion enabled by default.

Projects are permanently deleted after a seven-day delay.

If you are on the Free tier, your projects are immediately deleted, and you will not be able to restore them.

You can view and restore projects marked for deletion.

Inactive project deletion

Inactive project deletion is disabled on GitLab.com.

Alternative SSH port

GitLab.com can be reached by using a different SSH port for git+ssh.

An example ~/.ssh/config is the following:

Host gitlab.com
  Hostname altssh.gitlab.com
  User git
  Port 443
  PreferredAuthentications publickey
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gitlab

GitLab Pages

Some settings for GitLab Pages differ from the defaults for self-managed instances:

The maximum size of your Pages site depends on the maximum artifact size, which is part of GitLab CI/CD.

Rate limits also exist for GitLab Pages.

GitLab container registry

To use the GitLab container registry, Docker clients must have access to:

• The registry endpoint and GitLab.com for authorization.
• Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud Content Delivery Network to download images.

GitLab.com is fronted by Cloudflare. For incoming connections to GitLab.com, you must allow CIDR blocks of Cloudflare (IPv4 and IPv6).

GitLab CI/CD

Below are the current settings regarding GitLab CI/CD. Any settings or feature limits not listed here are using the defaults listed in the related documentation.

Package registry limits

The maximum file size for a package uploaded to the GitLab package registry varies by format:

Account and limit settings

GitLab.com has the following account limits enabled. If a setting is not listed, the default value is the same as for self-managed instances:

If you are near or over the repository size limit, you can either:

• Reduce your repository size with Git.
• Purchase additional storage.

NOTE: git push and GitLab project imports are limited to 5 GiB per request through Cloudflare. Imports other than a file upload are not affected by this limit. Repository limits apply to both public and private projects.

Default import sources

The import sources that are available to you by default depend on which GitLab you use:

• GitLab.com: All available import sources are enabled by default.
• GitLab self-managed: No import sources are enabled by default and must be enabled.

Import placeholder user limits

The number of placeholder users created during an import on GitLab.com is limited per top-level namespace. The limits differ depending on your plan and seat count. For more information, see the table of placeholder user limits for GitLab.com.

IP range

GitLab.com uses the IP ranges 34.74.90.64/28 and 34.74.226.0/24 for traffic from its Web/API fleet. This whole range is solely allocated to GitLab. You can expect connections from webhooks or repository mirroring to come from those IPs and allow them.

GitLab.com is fronted by Cloudflare. For incoming connections to GitLab.com, you might need to allow CIDR blocks of Cloudflare (IPv4 and IPv6).

For outgoing connections from CI/CD runners, we are not providing static IP addresses. Most GitLab.com instance runners are deployed into Google Cloud in us-east1, except Linux GPU-enabled and Linux Arm64, hosted in us-central1. You can configure any IP-based firewall by looking up IP address ranges or CIDR blocks for GCP. MacOS runners are hosted on AWS with runner managers hosted on Google Cloud. To configure IP-based firewall, you must allow both AWS IP address ranges and Google Cloud.

Hostname list

Add these hostnames when you configure allow-lists in local HTTP(S) proxies, or other web-blocking software that governs end-user computers. Pages on GitLab.com load content from these hostnames:

• gitlab.com
• *.gitlab.com
• *.gitlab-static.net
• *.gitlab.io
• *.gitlab.net

Documentation and Company pages served over docs.gitlab.com and about.gitlab.com also load certain page content directly from common public CDN hostnames.

Webhooks

The following limits apply for webhooks.

Rate limits

The number of times a webhook can be called per minute, per top-level namespace. The limit varies depending on your plan and the number of seats in your subscription.

Other limits

For self-managed instance limits, see:

• Webhook rate limit.
• Number of webhooks.
• Webhook timeout.
• Parallel Pages deployments.

GitLab-hosted runners

You can use GitLab-hosted runners to run your CI/CD jobs on GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated to seamlessly build, test, and deploy your application on different environments.

For more information, see GitLab-hosted runners.

Puma

GitLab.com uses the default of 60 seconds for Puma request timeouts.

Maximum number of reviewers and assignees

• Maximum assignees introduced in GitLab 15.6.
• Maximum reviewers introduced in GitLab 15.9.

Merge requests enforce these maximums:

• Maximum assignees: 200
• Maximum reviewers: 200

GitLab.com-specific rate limits

NOTE: See Rate limits for administrator documentation.

When a request is rate limited, GitLab responds with a 429 status code. The client should wait before attempting the request again. There are also informational headers with this response detailed in rate limiting responses.

The following table describes the rate limits for GitLab.com:

More details are available on the rate limits for protected paths and raw endpoints.

GitLab can rate-limit requests at several layers. The rate limits listed here are configured in the application. These limits are the most restrictive per IP address. For more information about the rate limits for GitLab.com, see the documentation in the handbook.

Rate limiting responses

For information on rate limiting responses, see:

• List of headers on responses to blocked requests.
• Customizable response text.

Protected paths throttle

GitLab.com responds with HTTP status code 429 to POST requests at protected paths that exceed 10 requests per minute per IP address.

See the source below for which paths are protected. This includes user creation, user confirmation, user sign in, and password reset.

User and IP rate limits includes a list of the headers responded to blocked requests.

See Protected Paths for more details.

IP blocks

IP blocks can occur when GitLab.com receives unusual traffic from a single IP address that the system views as potentially malicious. This can be based on rate limit settings. After the unusual traffic ceases, the IP address is automatically released depending on the type of block, as described in a following section.

If you receive a 403 Forbidden error for all requests to GitLab.com, check for any automated processes that may be triggering a block. For assistance, contact GitLab Support with details, such as the affected IP address.

Git and container registry failed authentication ban

GitLab.com responds with HTTP status code 403 for 15 minutes, if 300 failed authentication requests were received in a 1-minute period from a single IP address.

This applies only to Git requests and container registry (/jwt/auth) requests (combined).

This limit:

• Is reset by requests that authenticate successfully. For example, 299 failed authentication requests followed by 1 successful request, followed by 299 more failed authentication requests would not trigger a ban.
• Does not apply to JWT requests authenticated by gitlab-ci-token.

No response headers are provided.

git requests over https always send an unauthenticated request first, which for private repositories results in a 401 error. git then attempts an authenticated request with a username, password, or access token (if available). These requests might lead to a temporary IP block if too many requests are sent simultaneously. To resolve this issue, use SSH keys to communicate with GitLab.

Pagination response headers

For performance reasons, if a query returns more than 10,000 records, GitLab excludes some headers.

Visibility settings

Projects, groups, and snippets have the Internal visibility setting disabled on GitLab.com.

SSH maximum number of connections

GitLab.com defines the maximum number of concurrent, unauthenticated SSH connections by using the MaxStartups setting. If more than the maximum number of allowed connections occur concurrently, they are dropped and users get an ssh_exchange_identification error.

Group and project import by uploading export files

To help avoid abuse, the following are rate limited:

• Project and group imports.
• Group and project exports that use files.
• Export downloads.

For more information, see:

• Project import/export rate limits.
• Group import/export rate limits.

Non-configurable limits

See non-configurable limits for information on rate limits that are not configurable, and therefore also used on GitLab.com.

GitLab.com-specific Gitaly RPC concurrency limits

Per-repository Gitaly RPC concurrency and queuing limits are configured for different types of Git operations such as git clone. When these limits are exceeded, a fatal: remote error: GitLab is currently unable to handle this request due to load message is returned to the client.

For administrator documentation, see limit RPC concurrency.

GitLab.com logging

We use Fluentd to parse our logs. Fluentd sends our logs to Stackdriver Logging and Cloud Pub/Sub. Stackdriver is used for storing logs long-term in Google Cold Storage (GCS). Cloud Pub/Sub is used to forward logs to an Elastic cluster using pubsubbeat.

You can view more information in our runbooks such as:

• A detailed list of what we're logging
• Our current log retention policies
• A diagram of our logging infrastructure

Job logs

By default, GitLab does not expire job logs. Job logs are retained indefinitely, and can't be configured on GitLab.com to expire. You can erase job logs manually with the Jobs API or by deleting a pipeline.

GitLab.com at scale

In addition to the GitLab Enterprise Edition Linux package install, GitLab.com uses the following applications and settings to achieve scale. All settings are publicly available, as Kubernetes configuration or Chef cookbooks.

Elastic cluster

We use Elasticsearch and Kibana for part of our monitoring solution:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab-elk · GitLab
• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab_elasticsearch · GitLab

Fluentd

We use Fluentd to unify our GitLab logs:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab_fluentd · GitLab

Prometheus

Prometheus complete our monitoring stack:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab-prometheus · GitLab

Grafana

For the visualization of monitoring data:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab-grafana · GitLab

Sentry

Open source error tracking:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab-sentry · GitLab

Consul

Service discovery:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab_consul · GitLab

HAProxy

High Performance TCP/HTTP Load Balancer:

• gitlab-cookbooks / gitlab-haproxy · GitLab

Sidekiq

GitLab.com runs Sidekiq as an external process for Ruby job scheduling.

The current settings are in the GitLab.com Kubernetes pod configuration.