Environment variables (FREE SELF)

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.