Gitlab-workhorse is a smart reverse proxy for GitLab. It handles "large" HTTP requests such as file downloads, file uploads, Git push/pull and Git archive downloads.
- Workhorse can handle some requests without involving Rails at all: for example, Javascript files and CSS files are served straight from disk.
- Workhorse can modify responses sent by Rails: for example if you use
send_filein Rails then gitlab-workhorse will open the file on disk and send its contents as the response body to the client. - Workhorse can take over requests after asking permission from Rails.
Example: handling
git clone. - Workhorse can modify requests before passing them to Rails. Example: when handling a Git LFS upload Workhorse first asks permission from Rails, then it stores the request body in a tempfile, then it sends a modified request containing the tempfile path to Rails.
- Workhorse can manage long-lived WebSocket connections for Rails. Example: handling the terminal websocket for environments.
- Workhorse does not connect to Postgres, only to Rails and (optionally) Redis.
- We assume that all requests that reach Workhorse pass through an upstream proxy such as NGINX or Apache first.
- Workhorse does not accept HTTPS connections.
- Workhorse does not clean up idle client connections.
- We assume that all requests to Rails pass through Workhorse.
For more information see 'A brief history of gitlab-workhorse'.
gitlab-workhorse [OPTIONS]
Options:
-apiCiLongPollingDuration duration
Long polling duration for job requesting for runners (default 0s - disabled)
-apiLimit uint
Number of API requests allowed at single time
-apiQueueDuration duration
Maximum queueing duration of requests (default 30s)
-apiQueueLimit uint
Number of API requests allowed to be queued
-authBackend string
Authentication/authorization backend (default "http://localhost:8080")
-authSocket string
Optional: Unix domain socket to dial authBackend at
-developmentMode
Allow to serve assets from Rails app
-documentRoot string
Path to static files content (default "public")
-listenAddr string
Listen address for HTTP server (default "localhost:8181")
-listenNetwork string
Listen 'network' (tcp, tcp4, tcp6, unix) (default "tcp")
-listenUmask int
Umask for Unix socket
-pprofListenAddr string
pprof listening address, e.g. 'localhost:6060'
-proxyHeadersTimeout duration
How long to wait for response headers when proxying the request (default 5m0s)
-secretPath string
File with secret key to authenticate with authBackend (default "./.gitlab_workhorse_secret")
-config string
File that hold configuration. Currently only for redis. File is in TOML-format (default "")
-version
Print version and exit
The 'auth backend' refers to the GitLab Rails application. The name is a holdover from when gitlab-workhorse only handled Git push/pull over HTTP.
Gitlab-workhorse can listen on either a TCP or a Unix domain socket. It can also open a second listening TCP listening socket with the Go net/http/pprof profiler server.
Gitlab-workhorse can listen on redis events (currently only builds/register
for runners). This requires you to pass a valid TOML config file via
-config flag.
For regular setups it only requires the following (replacing the string
with the actual socket)
Gitlab-workhorse integrates with Redis to do long polling for CI build requests. This is configured via two things:
- Redis settings in the TOML config file
- The
-apiCiLongPollingDurationcommand line flag to control polling behavior for CI build requests
It is OK to enable Redis in the config file but to leave CI polling disabled; this just results in an idle Redis pubsub connection. The opposite is not possible: CI long polling requires a correct Redis configuration.
Below we discuss the options for the [redis] section in the config
file.
[redis]
URL = "unix:///var/run/gitlab/redis.sock"
Password = "my_awesome_password"
Sentinel = [ "tcp://sentinel1:23456", "tcp://sentinel2:23456" ]
SentinelMaster = "mymaster"
URLtakes a string in the formatunix://path/to/redis.sockortcp://host:port.Passwordis only required if your redis instance is password-protectedSentinelis used if you are using Sentinel. NOTE that if bothSentinelandURLare given, onlySentinelwill be used
Optional fields are as follows:
[redis]
DB = 0
ReadTimeout = "1s"
KeepAlivePeriod = "5m"
MaxIdle = 1
MaxActive = 1
DBis the Database to connect to. Defaults to0ReadTimeoutis how long a redis read-command can take. Defaults to1sKeepAlivePeriodis how long the redis connection is to be kept alive without anything flowing through it. Defaults to5mMaxIdleis how many idle connections can be in the redis-pool at once. Defaults to 1MaxActiveis how many connections the pool can keep. Defaults to 1
If you are mounting GitLab at a relative URL, e.g.
example.com/gitlab, then you should also use this relative URL in
the authBackend setting:
gitlab-workhorse -authBackend http://localhost:8080/gitlab
To install gitlab-workhorse you need Go 1.8 or newer and GNU Make.
To install into /usr/local/bin run make install.
make install
To install into /foo/bin set the PREFIX variable.
make install PREFIX=/foo
On some operating systems, such as FreeBSD, you may have to use
gmake instead of make.
GitLab-Workhorse supports remote error tracking with Sentry. To enable this feature set the GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN environment variable.
Omnibus (/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb):
gitlab_workhorse['env'] = {'GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN' => 'https://foobar'}
Source installations (/etc/default/gitlab):
export GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN='https://foobar'
Run the tests with:
make clean test
Each feature in gitlab-workhorse should have an integration test that verifies that the feature 'kicks in' on the right requests and leaves other requests unaffected. It is better to also have package-level tests for specific behavior but the high-level integration tests should have the first priority during development.
It is OK if a feature is only covered by integration tests.
This code is distributed under the MIT license, see the LICENSE file.