Gitaly timeouts

Gitaly provides two types of configurable timeouts:

  • Call timeouts, configured by using the GitLab UI.
  • Negotiation timeouts, configured by using Gitaly configuration files.

Configure the call timeouts

Configure the following call timeouts to make sure that long-running Gitaly calls don’t needlessly take up resources. To configure the call timeouts:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin Area.
  2. Select Settings > Preferences.
  3. Expand the Gitaly timeouts section.
  4. Set each timeout as required.

Available call timeouts

Different call timeouts are available for different Gitaly operations.

Timeout Default Description
Default 55 seconds Timeout for most Gitaly calls (not enforced for git fetch and push operations, or Sidekiq jobs). For example, checking if a repository exists on disk. Makes sure that Gitaly calls made in a web request cannot exceed the entire request timeout. It should be shorter than the worker timeout that can be configured for Puma. If a Gitaly call timeout exceeds the worker timeout, the remaining time from the worker timeout is used to avoid having to terminate the worker.
Fast 10 seconds Timeout for fast Gitaly operations used in requests, sometimes multiple times. For example, checking if a repository exists on disk. If fast operations exceed this threshold, there may be a problem with a storage shard. Failing fast can help maintain the stability of the GitLab instance.
Medium 30 seconds Timeout for Gitaly operations that should be fast (possibly in requests) but preferably not used multiple times in a request. For example, loading blobs. Timeout that should be set between Default and Fast.

Configure the negotiation timeouts

Introduced in GitLab 16.5.

You might need to increase the negotiation timeout:

  • For particularly large repositories.
  • When performing these commands in parallel.

You can configure negotiation timeouts for:

  • git-upload-pack(1), which is invoked by a Gitaly node when you execute git fetch.
  • git-upload-archive(1), which is invoked by a Gitaly node when you execute git archive --remote.

To configure these timeouts:

Linux package (Omnibus)

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb: 

gitaly['configuration'] = {
    timeout: {
        upload_pack_negotiation: '10m',      # 10 minutes
        upload_archive_negotiation: '20m',   # 20 minutes
    }
}
Self-compiled (source)

Edit /home/git/gitaly/config.toml: 

[timeout]
upload_pack_negotiation = "10m"
upload_archive_negotiation = "20m"

For the values, use the format of ParseDuration in Go.

These timeouts affect only the negotiation phase of remote Git operations, not the entire transfer.