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Troubleshooting Gitaly and Gitaly Cluster (FREE SELF)

Refer to the information below when troubleshooting Gitaly and Gitaly Cluster.

Before troubleshooting, see the Gitaly and Gitaly Cluster frequently asked questions.

Troubleshoot Gitaly

The following sections provide possible solutions to Gitaly errors.

See also Gitaly timeout settings.

Check versions when using standalone Gitaly servers

When using standalone Gitaly servers, you must make sure they are the same version as GitLab to ensure full compatibility:

  1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin on your GitLab instance.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Overview > Gitaly Servers.
  3. Confirm all Gitaly servers indicate that they are up to date.

Use gitaly-debug

The gitaly-debug command provides "production debugging" tools for Gitaly and Git performance. It is intended to help production engineers and support engineers investigate Gitaly performance problems.

If you're using GitLab 11.6 or newer, this tool should be installed on your GitLab or Gitaly server already at /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/gitaly-debug. If you're investigating an older GitLab version you can compile this tool offline and copy the executable to your server:

git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly.git
cd cmd/gitaly-debug
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o gitaly-debug

To see the help page of gitaly-debug for a list of supported sub-commands, run:

gitaly-debug -h

Commits, pushes, and clones return a 401

remote: GitLab: 401 Unauthorized

You need to sync your gitlab-secrets.json file with your GitLab application nodes.

Client side gRPC logs

Gitaly uses the gRPC RPC framework. The Ruby gRPC client has its own log file which may contain useful information when you are seeing Gitaly errors. You can control the log level of the gRPC client with the GRPC_LOG_LEVEL environment variable. The default level is WARN.

You can run a gRPC trace with:

sudo GRPC_TRACE=all GRPC_VERBOSITY=DEBUG gitlab-rake gitlab:gitaly:check

Server side gRPC logs

gRPC tracing can also be enabled in Gitaly itself with the GODEBUG=http2debug environment variable. To set this in an Omnibus GitLab install:

  1. Add the following to your gitlab.rb file:

    gitaly['env'] = {
  "GODEBUG=http2debug" => "2"
}

  2. Reconfigure GitLab.

Correlating Git processes with RPCs

Sometimes you need to find out which Gitaly RPC created a particular Git process.

One method for doing this is by using DEBUG logging. However, this needs to be enabled ahead of time and the logs produced are quite verbose.

A lightweight method for doing this correlation is by inspecting the environment of the Git process (using its PID) and looking at the CORRELATION_ID variable:

PID=<Git process ID>
sudo cat /proc/$PID/environ | tr '\0' '\n' | grep ^CORRELATION_ID=

This method isn't reliable for git cat-file processes, because Gitaly internally pools and re-uses those across RPCs.

Observing gitaly-ruby traffic

gitaly-ruby is an internal implementation detail of Gitaly, so, there's not that much visibility into what goes on inside gitaly-ruby processes.

If you have Prometheus set up to scrape your Gitaly process, you can see request rates and error codes for individual RPCs in gitaly-ruby by querying grpc_client_handled_total.

  • In theory, this metric does not differentiate between gitaly-ruby and other RPCs.
  • In practice from GitLab 11.9, all gRPC calls made by Gitaly itself are internal calls from the main Gitaly process to one of its gitaly-ruby sidecars.

Assuming your grpc_client_handled_total counter only observes Gitaly, the following query shows you RPCs are (most likely) internally implemented as calls to gitaly-ruby:

sum(rate(grpc_client_handled_total[5m])) by (grpc_method) > 0

Repository changes fail with a 401 Unauthorized error

If you run Gitaly on its own server and notice these conditions:

  • Users can successfully clone and fetch repositories by using both SSH and HTTPS.
  • Users can't push to repositories, or receive a 401 Unauthorized message when attempting to make changes to them in the web UI.

Gitaly may be failing to authenticate with the Gitaly client because it has the wrong secrets file.

Confirm the following are all true:

  • When any user performs a git push to any repository on this Gitaly server, it fails with a 401 Unauthorized error:

    remote: GitLab: 401 Unauthorized
To <REMOTE_URL>
! [remote rejected] branch-name -> branch-name (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to '<REMOTE_URL>'

  • When any user adds or modifies a file from the repository using the GitLab UI, it immediately fails with a red 401 Unauthorized banner.

  • Creating a new project and initializing it with a README successfully creates the project but doesn't create the README.

  • When tailing the logs on a Gitaly client and reproducing the error, you get 401 errors when reaching the /api/v4/internal/allowed endpoint:

    # api_json.log
{
  "time": "2019-07-18T00:30:14.967Z",
  "severity": "INFO",
  "duration": 0.57,
  "db": 0,
  "view": 0.57,
  "status": 401,
  "method": "POST",
  "path": "\/api\/v4\/internal\/allowed",
  "params": [
    {
      "key": "action",
      "value": "git-receive-pack"
    },
    {
      "key": "changes",
      "value": "REDACTED"
    },
    {
      "key": "gl_repository",
      "value": "REDACTED"
    },
    {
      "key": "project",
      "value": "\/path\/to\/project.git"
    },
    {
      "key": "protocol",
      "value": "web"
    },
    {
      "key": "env",
      "value": "{\"GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES\":[],\"GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES_RELATIVE\":[],\"GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY\":null,\"GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY_RELATIVE\":null}"
    },
    {
      "key": "user_id",
      "value": "2"
    },
    {
      "key": "secret_token",
      "value": "[FILTERED]"
    }
  ],
  "host": "gitlab.example.com",
  "ip": "REDACTED",
  "ua": "Ruby",
  "route": "\/api\/:version\/internal\/allowed",
  "queue_duration": 4.24,
  "gitaly_calls": 0,
  "gitaly_duration": 0,
  "correlation_id": "XPUZqTukaP3"
}

# nginx_access.log
[IP] - - [18/Jul/2019:00:30:14 +0000] "POST /api/v4/internal/allowed HTTP/1.1" 401 30 "" "Ruby"

To fix this problem, confirm that your gitlab-secrets.json file on the Gitaly server matches the one on Gitaly client. If it doesn't match, update the secrets file on the Gitaly server to match the Gitaly client, then reconfigure.

Repository pushes fail with a deny updating a hidden ref error

Due to a change introduced in GitLab 13.12, Gitaly has read-only, internal GitLab references that users are not permitted to update. If you attempt to update internal references with git push --mirror, Git returns the rejection error, deny updating a hidden ref.

The following references are read-only:

  • refs/environments/
  • refs/keep-around/
  • refs/merge-requests/
  • refs/pipelines/

To mirror-push branches and tags only, and avoid attempting to mirror-push protected refs, run:

git push origin +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/* +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*

Any other namespaces that the admin wants to push can be included there as well via additional patterns.

Command line tools cannot connect to Gitaly

gRPC cannot reach your Gitaly server if:

  • You can't connect to a Gitaly server with command-line tools.
  • Certain actions result in a 14: Connect Failed error message.

Verify you can reach Gitaly by using TCP:

sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:tcp_check[GITALY_SERVER_IP,GITALY_LISTEN_PORT]

If the TCP connection:

  • Fails, check your network settings and your firewall rules.
  • Succeeds, your networking and firewall rules are correct.

If you use proxy servers in your command line environment such as Bash, these can interfere with your gRPC traffic.

If you use Bash or a compatible command line environment, run the following commands to determine whether you have proxy servers configured:

echo $http_proxy
echo $https_proxy

If either of these variables have a value, your Gitaly CLI connections may be getting routed through a proxy which cannot connect to Gitaly.

To remove the proxy setting, run the following commands (depending on which variables had values):

unset http_proxy
unset https_proxy

Permission denied errors appearing in Gitaly or Praefect logs when accessing repositories

You might see the following in Gitaly and Praefect logs:

{
  ...
  "error":"rpc error: code = PermissionDenied desc = permission denied",
  "grpc.code":"PermissionDenied",
  "grpc.meta.client_name":"gitlab-web",
  "grpc.request.fullMethod":"/gitaly.ServerService/ServerInfo",
  "level":"warning",
  "msg":"finished unary call with code PermissionDenied",
  ...
}

This is a GRPC call error response code.

If this error occurs, even though the Gitaly auth tokens are set up correctly, it's likely that the Gitaly servers are experiencing clock drift.

Ensure the Gitaly clients and servers are synchronized, and use an NTP time server to keep them synchronized.

Gitaly not listening on new address after reconfiguring

When updating the gitaly['listen_addr'] or gitaly['prometheus_listen_addr'] values, Gitaly may continue to listen on the old address after a sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure.

When this occurs, run sudo gitlab-ctl restart to resolve the issue. This should no longer be necessary because this issue is resolved.

Permission denied errors appearing in Gitaly logs when accessing repositories from a standalone Gitaly node

If this error occurs even though file permissions are correct, it's likely that the Gitaly node is experiencing clock drift.

Please ensure that the GitLab and Gitaly nodes are synchronized and use an NTP time server to keep them synchronized if possible.

Troubleshoot Praefect (Gitaly Cluster)

The following sections provide possible solutions to Gitaly Cluster errors.

Praefect errors in logs

If you receive an error, check /var/log/gitlab/gitlab-rails/production.log.

Here are common errors and potential causes:

  • 500 response code
    • ActionView::Template::Error (7:permission denied)
      • praefect['auth_token'] and gitlab_rails['gitaly_token'] do not match on the GitLab server.
    • Unable to save project. Error: 7:permission denied
      • Secret token in praefect['storage_nodes'] on GitLab server does not match the value in gitaly['auth_token'] on one or more Gitaly servers.
  • 503 response code
    • GRPC::Unavailable (14:failed to connect to all addresses)
      • GitLab was unable to reach Praefect.
    • GRPC::Unavailable (14:all SubCons are in TransientFailure...)
      • Praefect cannot reach one or more of its child Gitaly nodes. Try running the Praefect connection checker to diagnose.

Determine primary Gitaly node

To determine the current primary Gitaly node for a specific Praefect node:

  • Use the Shard Primary Election Grafana chart on the Gitlab Omnibus - Praefect dashboard. This is recommended.

  • If you do not have Grafana set up, use the following command on each host of each Praefect node:

    curl localhost:9652/metrics | grep gitaly_praefect_primaries`

Relation does not exist errors

By default Praefect database tables are created automatically by gitlab-ctl reconfigure task.

However, the Praefect database tables are not created on initial reconfigure and can throw errors that relations do not exist if either:

  • The gitlab-ctl reconfigure command isn't executed.
  • There are errors during the execution.

For example:

  • ERROR: relation "node_status" does not exist at character 13

  • ERROR: relation "replication_queue_lock" does not exist at character 40

  • This error:

    {"level":"error","msg":"Error updating node: pq: relation \"node_status\" does not exist","pid":210882,"praefectName":"gitlab1x4m:0.0.0.0:2305","time":"2021-04-01T19:26:19.473Z","virtual_storage":"praefect-cluster-1"}

To solve this, the database schema migration can be done using sql-migrate sub-command of the praefect command:

$ sudo /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/praefect -config /var/opt/gitlab/praefect/config.toml sql-migrate
praefect sql-migrate: OK (applied 21 migrations)

Requests fail with 'repo scoped: invalid Repository' errors

This indicates that the virtual storage name used in the Praefect configuration does not match the storage name used in git_data_dirs setting for GitLab.

Resolve this by matching the virtual storage names used in Praefect and GitLab configuration.