Forks of www-gitlab-com exceed repository storage limits, blocking contributions
Summary
Forks of www-gitlab-com
created as outlined in the Steps to Reproduce will take up 10.5 Gb repository storage, exceeding GitLab.com's a per-project repo size limit of 10Gb.
After forking www-gitlab-com
as described in steps to reproduce, the user sees a notification banner that their www-gitlab-com
project has exceeded the Project Storage Limit on GitLab.com. Attempting to commit or push any changes to the project will be blocked by the storage limit. The only way to raise this project storage limit is to contact support who will manually raise the limit and manually lower it at a later date.
The results are that some community members trying to contribute to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com are getting blocked from creating MRs for improvements to our website/handbook.
If this is blocking you from contributing, please refer to the workaround below.
Steps to reproduce
- Go to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com on a personal account (not your work account)
- Click a file, any file
- Click the "Edit" button
- Click the "Fork" button
- Wait a few minutes
- Try to make a one-line change to your
www-gitlab-com
fork
Example Project
https://gitlab.com/myersg86/www-gitlab-com
What is the current bug behavior?
Forking www-gitlab-com
using steps to reproduce creates a 10.5Gb repository in the user's namespace, user is blocked from making any changes to it.
What is the expected correct behavior?
Forking www-gitlab-com
creates a Fork that uses Copy on Write storage - only changes (or diffs) take up storage space.
Relevant logs and/or screenshots
Creating the Fork:
Silly edit to a file in the forked repository
Project page for the fork I created
End result - "contact GitLab Administrator" for GitLab.com = contact GitLab Support
Output of checks
This bug happens on GitLab.com
Results of GitLab environment info
This bug happens on GitLab.com running GitLab Enterprise Edition 13.5.0-pre b19da3b16f4
Results of GitLab application Check
This bug happens on GitLab.com running GitLab Enterprise Edition 13.5.0-pre b19da3b16f4
Workaround
Workaround 1
If you've already created a fork of www-gitlab-com and you're experiencing this problem now:
- On the fork, navigate to Settings > General, expand next to "Advanced" and click "Run housekeeping".
- Allow housekeeping to complete (you'll get an email notification once it's finished)
- Make changes on the fork and create an MR to contribute your improvement or fix to the handbook/website
Semi-Workaround 2
By using a an alternative way to create the fork and not following these steps to reproduce, running Housekeeping should not be necessary.
- Go to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com
- Click the "Fork" button on the main project page
- Select your namespace
- Make changes to the new fork
- (optional) Create an MR to contribute an improvement or fix to the GitLab handbook/website
🤝
When forks are created in this way, Copy-on-Write is used for storage and only the diffs to the project will count toward the repository size. This results in a project that will not exceed GitLab.com 10Gb per-project storage limits.
FYI @joshlambert @smcgivern @supadhyaya @adawar @rpaik @nuritzi