gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/administration/pages/index.md

GitLab Pages Administration

Notes:

• Introduced in GitLab EE 8.3.
• Custom CNAMEs with TLS support were introduced in GitLab EE 8.5.
• GitLab Pages were ported to Community Edition in GitLab 8.17.
• This guide is for Omnibus GitLab installations. If you have installed GitLab from source, follow the Pages source installation document.

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This document describes how to set up the latest GitLab Pages feature. Make sure to read the changelog if you are upgrading to a new GitLab version as it may include new features and changes needed to be made in your configuration.

If you are looking for ways to upload your static content in GitLab Pages, you probably want to read the user documentation.

Overview

GitLab Pages makes use of the GitLab Pages daemon, a simple HTTP server written in Go that can listen on an external IP address and provide support for custom domains and custom 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.

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In the case of custom 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:

1. Run the pages daemon in the same server as GitLab, listening on a secondary IP
2. 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 will have to share it via network.
3. Run the pages daemon in the same server as GitLab, listening on the same IP but on different ports. In that case, you will have to proxy the traffic with a loadbalancer. If you choose that route note that you should use TCP load balancing for HTTPS. If you use TLS-termination (HTTPS-load balancing) the pages will not be able to be served with user provided certificates. For HTTP it's OK to use HTTP or TCP load balancing.

In this document, we will proceed assuming the first option.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the Pages configuration, you will need to:

1. Have a separate domain under which the GitLab Pages will be served. In this document we assume that to be example.io.
2. Configure a wildcard DNS record.
3. (Optional) Have a wildcard certificate for that domain if you decide to serve Pages under HTTPS.
4. (Optional but recommended) Enable Shared runners so that 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 1.2.3.4

where example.io is the domain under which GitLab Pages will be served and 1.2.3.4 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 install GitLab Pages in four different ways.

Option 1. Custom domains with HTTPS support

URL scheme	Wildcard certificate	Custom domain with HTTP support	Custom domain with HTTPS support	Secondary IP
https://page.example.io and https://page.com	yes	redirects to HTTPS	yes	yes

Pages enabled, daemon is enabled AND pages has external IP support enabled. 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. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   pages_external_url "https://example.io"
   nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['1.1.1.1']
   pages_nginx['enable'] = false
   gitlab_pages['cert'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/example.io.crt"
   gitlab_pages['cert_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/example.io.key"
   gitlab_pages['external_http'] = '1.1.1.2:80'
   gitlab_pages['external_https'] = '1.1.1.2:443'
   

   where 1.1.1.1 is the primary IP address that GitLab is listening to and 1.1.1.2 the secondary IP where the GitLab Pages daemon listens to.

2. Reconfigure GitLab

Option 2. Custom domains without HTTPS support

URL scheme	Wildcard certificate	Custom domain with HTTP support	Custom domain with HTTPS support	Secondary IP
http://page.example.io and http://page.com	no	yes	no	yes

Pages enabled, daemon is enabled AND pages has external IP support enabled. 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. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   pages_external_url "http://example.io"
   nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['1.1.1.1']
   pages_nginx['enable'] = false
   gitlab_pages['external_http'] = '1.1.1.2:80'
   

   where 1.1.1.1 is the primary IP address that GitLab is listening to and 1.1.1.2 the secondary IP where the GitLab Pages daemon listens to.

2. Reconfigure GitLab

Option 3. Wildcard HTTPS domain without custom domains

URL scheme	Wildcard certificate	Custom domain with HTTP support	Custom domain with HTTPS support	Secondary IP
https://page.example.io	yes	no	no	no

Pages enabled, daemon is enabled and NGINX will proxy all requests to the daemon. Pages daemon doesn't listen to the outside world.

1. Place the certificate and key inside /etc/gitlab/ssl

2. In /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb specify the following configuration:

   pages_external_url 'https://example.io'
   
   pages_nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true
   pages_nginx['ssl_certificate'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages-nginx.crt"
   pages_nginx['ssl_certificate_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages-nginx.key"
   

   where pages-nginx.crt and pages-nginx.key are the SSL cert and key, respectively.

3. Reconfigure GitLab

Option 4. Wildcard HTTP domain without custom domains

URL scheme	Wildcard certificate	Custom domain with HTTP support	Custom domain with HTTPS support	Secondary IP
http://page.example.io	no	no	no	no

Pages enabled, daemon is enabled and NGINX will proxy all requests to the daemon. Pages daemon doesn't listen to the outside world.

1. Set the external URL for GitLab Pages in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   pages_external_url 'http://example.io'
   

2. Reconfigure GitLab

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 /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages. If you wish to store them in another location you must set it up in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   gitlab_rails['pages_path'] = "/mnt/storage/pages"
   

2. Reconfigure GitLab

Set maximum pages size

The maximum size of the unpacked archive per project can be configured in the Admin area under the Application settings in the Maximum size of pages (MB). The default is 100MB.

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.

Changelog

GitLab Pages were first introduced in GitLab EE 8.3. Since then, many features where added, like custom CNAME and TLS support, and many more are likely to come. Below is a brief changelog. If no changes were introduced or a version is missing from the changelog, assume that the documentation is the same as the latest previous version.

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GitLab 8.17 (documentation)

• GitLab Pages were ported to Community Edition in GitLab 8.17.
• Documentation was refactored to be more modular and easy to follow.

GitLab 8.5 (documentation)

• In GitLab 8.5 we introduced the gitlab-pages daemon which is now the recommended way to set up GitLab Pages.
• The NGINX configs have changed to reflect this change. So make sure to update them.
• Custom CNAME and TLS certificates support.
• Documentation was moved to one place.

GitLab 8.3 (documentation)

• GitLab Pages feature was introduced.