How to fix GitLab 18 error regarding git_data_dirs

Introduction¶

Several years ago I set up GitLab in my home environment. I apprecate past me documenting the basic steps I took to do this, because I'll need them again at some point when I make upgrades to my home lab. I've documented somethings I've done (like setting up GitLab runners, or dealing with Grafana being deprecated within GitLab or utilzing GitLab to automatically backup my Obsidian notes) Unfortunately, I didn't document everything. One of those things that I didn't document was changing where my repositories are stored on disk by default.

In GitLab 17.8 (January 2025), a new deprecation warning started appearing.

git_data_dirs has been deprecated since 17.8 and will be removed in 18.0. See https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/configuration.html#migrating-from-git_data_dirs for migration instructions.

I'm a little annoyed that there were only 5 months of notice on this because major versions are released in May. In any case, if you attempt to update to version 18 or beyond and are utilizing git_data_dirs, the upgrade will fail.

Solution¶

As usual, GitLab is good at providing documentation on resoluting and migrating through the deprecations. However, on my first attempt I encountered an error. I believe it's because I missed a note buried in the text - not the code blocks - the first time.

Note that the /repositories suffix must be appended to the path because it was previously appended internally.

The solution is to open /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb (you probably should make a backup first). Find the git_data_dirs line. For me this was around line 455. Then comment out this entire block.

Then find (or add) the gitaly['configuration'] block. This was immediately after the git_data_dirs section for me. Uncomment it, and add the appropriate path (from your git_data_dirs block) and add /repositories to the end of it.

Once you are done, run

gitlab-ctl reconfigure
gitlab-ctl restart

Give it a minute to fire up all the GitLab subcomponents, and then you should be able to update GitLab beyond version 18.

New code section¶

My gitlab.rb now has this:

#git_data_dirs({
#  "default" => {
#    "path" => "/previous/path/to/repos"
#   }
#})

### Gitaly settings
gitaly['configuration'] = {
storage: [
    {
    name: 'default',
    path: '/previous/path/to/repos/repositories',
    },
],
}

Conclusion¶

With this quick change, I can continue to hold the repositories at a location of my choosing. The biggest thing is to add /repositories to the path in the new Gitly configuration. With this change, I can continue to utilizing the current version of GitLab - a tool that I still find invaluable.