Repository checks (FREE)

Introduced in GitLab 8.7.

Git has a built-in mechanism, git fsck, to verify the integrity of all data committed to a repository. GitLab administrators can trigger such a check for a project via the project page under the Admin Area. The checks run asynchronously so it may take a few minutes before the check result is visible on the project Admin Area. If the checks failed you can see their output on in the repocheck.log file.

This setting is off by default, because it can cause many false alarms.

Periodic checks

When enabled, GitLab periodically runs a repository check on all project repositories and wiki repositories in order to detect data corruption. A project is checked no more than once per month. If any projects fail their repository checks all GitLab administrators receive an email notification of the situation. This notification is sent out once a week, by default, midnight at the start of Sunday. Repositories with known check failures can be found at /admin/projects?last_repository_check_failed=1.

Disabling periodic checks

You can disable the periodic checks on the Settings page of the Admin Area.

What to do if a check failed

If the repository check fails for some repository you should look up the error in the repocheck.log file on disk:

/var/log/gitlab/gitlab-rails for Omnibus GitLab installations
/home/git/gitlab/log for installations from source

If the periodic repository check causes false alarms, you can clear all repository check states by:

On the top bar, select Menu > {admin} Admin.
On the left sidebar, select Settings > Repository (/admin/application_settings/repository).
Expand the Repository maintenance section.
Select Clear all repository checks.

Run a check manually

git fsck is a read-only check that you can run manually against the repository on the Gitaly server.

For Omnibus GitLab installations, repositories are stored by default in /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories.
Identify the subdirectory that contains the repository that you need to check.

To run a check (for example):

sudo /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/git -C /var/opt/gitlab/git-data/repositories/@hashed/0b/91/0b91...f9.git fsck

You can also run Rake tasks for checking Git repositories, which can be used to run git fsck against all repositories and generate repository checksums, as a way to compare repositories on different servers.