Environment variables
GitLab exposes certain environment variables which can be used to override their defaults values.
People usually configure GitLab with /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb for Omnibus
installations, or gitlab.yml for installations from source.
You can use the following environment variables to override certain values:
Supported environment variables
| Variable | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
DATABASE_URL
| string | The database URL; is of the form: postgresql://localhost/blog_development.
|
ENABLE_BOOTSNAP
| string | Toggles Bootsnap for speeding up initial Rails boot. Enabled by default for non-production environments. Set to 0 to disable.
|
EXTERNAL_URL
| string | Specify the external URL at the time of installation. |
EXTERNAL_VALIDATION_SERVICE_TIMEOUT
| integer | Timeout, in seconds, for an external CI/CD pipeline validation service. Default is 5.
|
EXTERNAL_VALIDATION_SERVICE_URL
| string | URL to an external CI/CD pipeline validation service. |
EXTERNAL_VALIDATION_SERVICE_TOKEN
| string | The X-Gitlab-Token for authentication with an external CI/CD pipeline validation service.
|
GITLAB_CDN_HOST
| string | Sets the base URL for a CDN to serve static assets (for example, https://mycdnsubdomain.fictional-cdn.com).
|
GITLAB_EMAIL_DISPLAY_NAME
| string | The name used in the From field in emails sent by GitLab. |
GITLAB_EMAIL_FROM
| string | The email address used in the From field in emails sent by GitLab. |
GITLAB_EMAIL_REPLY_TO
| string | The email address used in the Reply-To field in emails sent by GitLab. |
GITLAB_EMAIL_SUBJECT_SUFFIX
| string | The email subject suffix used in emails sent by GitLab. |
GITLAB_HOST
| string | The full URL of the GitLab server (including http:// or https://).
|
GITLAB_MARKUP_TIMEOUT
| string | Timeout, in seconds, for rest2html and pod2html commands executed by the gitlab-markup gem. Default is 10.
|
GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD
| string | Sets the password for the root user on installation.
|
GITLAB_SHARED_RUNNERS_REGISTRATION_TOKEN
| string | Sets the initial registration token used for runners. |
RAILS_ENV
| string | The Rails environment; can be one of production, development, staging, or test.
|
UNSTRUCTURED_RAILS_LOG
| string | Enables the unstructured log in addition to JSON logs (defaults to true).
|
GITLAB_RAILS_CACHE_DEFAULT_TTL_SECONDS
| integer | The default TTL used for entries stored in the Rails-cache. Default is 28800. Introduced in 15.3.
|
Adding more variables
We welcome merge requests to make more settings configurable by using variables.
Make changes to the config/initializers/1_settings.rb file, and use the
naming scheme GITLAB_#{name in 1_settings.rb in upper case}.
Omnibus configuration
To set environment variables, follow these instructions.
It’s possible to preconfigure the GitLab Docker image by adding the environment
variable GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG to the docker run command.
For more information, see the Pre-configure Docker container
section of the Omnibus GitLab documentation.