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Dependency Proxy (FREE)
- Moved from GitLab Premium to GitLab Free in 13.6.
- Introduced support for private groups in GitLab 13.7.
- Anonymous access to images in public groups is no longer available starting in GitLab 13.7.
- Introduced support for pull-by-digest and Docker version 20.x in GitLab 13.10.
The GitLab Dependency Proxy is a local proxy you can use for your frequently-accessed upstream images.
In the case of CI/CD, the Dependency Proxy receives a request and returns the upstream image from a registry, acting as a pull-through cache.
Prerequisites
To use the Dependency Proxy, it must be enabled for the GitLab instance. It's enabled by default, but administrators can turn it off.
Supported images and packages
The following images and packages are supported.
Image/Package | GitLab version |
---|---|
Docker | 11.11+ |
For a list of planned additions, view the direction page.
Enable or turn off the Dependency Proxy for a group
To enable or turn off the Dependency Proxy for a group:
- Go to your group's Settings > Packages & Registries.
- Expand the Dependency Proxy section.
- To enable the proxy, turn on Enable Proxy. To turn it off, turn the toggle off.
This setting only affects the Dependency Proxy for a group. Only an administrator can turn the Dependency Proxy on or off for the entire GitLab instance.
View the Dependency Proxy
To view the Dependency Proxy:
- Go to your group's Packages & Registries > Dependency Proxy.
The Dependency Proxy is not available for projects.
Use the Dependency Proxy for Docker images
You can use GitLab as a source for your Docker images.
Prerequisites:
- Your images must be stored on Docker Hub.
Authenticate with the Dependency Proxy
- Introduced in GitLab 13.7.
- It's deployed behind a feature flag, enabled by default.
- It's enabled on GitLab.com.
- It's recommended for production use.
- For GitLab self-managed instances, GitLab administrators can opt to disable it. (FREE SELF)
WARNING: This feature might not be available to you. Check the version history note above for details. The requirement to authenticate is a breaking change added in 13.7. An administrator can temporarily disable it if it has disrupted your existing Dependency Proxy usage.
Because the Dependency Proxy is storing Docker images in a space associated with your group, you must authenticate against the Dependency Proxy.
Follow the instructions for using images from a private registry,
but instead of using registry.example.com:5000
, use your GitLab domain with no port gitlab.example.com
.
For example, to manually log in:
docker login gitlab.example.com --username my_username --password my_password
You can authenticate using:
- Your GitLab username and password.
- A personal access token with the scope set to
read_registry
andwrite_registry
. - A group deploy token with the scope set to
read_registry
andwrite_registry
.
Users accessing the Dependency Proxy with a personal access token or username and password require at least Guest membership to the group they pull images from.
SAML SSO
When SSO enforcement is enabled, users must be signed-in through SSO before they can pull images through the Dependency Proxy.
Authenticate within CI/CD
- Introduced in GitLab 13.7.
- Automatic runner authentication, when using the Dependency Proxy to pull the image for the job, was added in GitLab 13.9.
- The prefix for group names containing uppercase letters was fixed in GitLab 13.10.
Runners log in to the Dependency Proxy automatically. To pull through the Dependency Proxy, use one of the predefined variables:
CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX
pulls through the top-level group.CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_DIRECT_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX
pulls through the subgroup, or direct group the project exists in.
Example pulling the latest alpine image:
# .gitlab-ci.yml
image: ${CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX}/alpine:latest
There are other additional predefined CI/CD variables you can also use:
CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_USER
: A CI/CD user for logging in to the Dependency Proxy.CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_PASSWORD
: A CI/CD password for logging in to the Dependency Proxy.CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_SERVER
: The server for logging in to the Dependency Proxy.CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX
: the image prefix for pulling images through the dependency proxy from the top-level group.CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_DIRECT_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX
: the image prefix for pulling images through the dependency proxy from the direct group or subgroup that the project belongs to.
CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_SERVER
and CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX
include the server port. If you explicitly include the Dependency Proxy
path, the port must be included, unless you have logged into the Dependency
Proxy manually without including the port:
docker pull gitlab.example.com:443/my-group/dependency_proxy/containers/alpine:latest
Example when using the Dependency Proxy to build an image:
# Dockerfile
FROM gitlab.example.com:443/my-group/dependency_proxy/containers/alpine:latest
# .gitlab-ci.yml
image: docker:19.03.12
variables:
DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375
DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ""
services:
- docker:19.03.12-dind
build:
image: docker:19.03.12
before_script:
- docker login -u $CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_USER -p $CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_PASSWORD $CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_SERVER
script:
- docker build -t test .
You can also use custom CI/CD variables to store and access your personal access token or deploy token.
Store a Docker image in Dependency Proxy cache
To store a Docker image in Dependency Proxy storage:
-
Go to your group's Packages & Registries > Dependency Proxy.
-
Copy the Dependency Proxy URL.
-
Use one of these commands. In these examples, the image is
alpine:latest
. -
You can also pull images by digest to specify exactly which version of an image to pull.
-
Pull an image by tag by adding the image to your
.gitlab-ci.yml
file:image: gitlab.example.com/groupname/dependency_proxy/containers/alpine:latest
-
Pull an image by digest by adding the image to your
.gitlab-ci.yml
file:image: ${CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX}/alpine@sha256:c9375e662992791e3f39e919b26f510e5254b42792519c180aad254e6b38f4dc
-
Manually pull the Docker image:
docker pull gitlab.example.com/groupname/dependency_proxy/containers/alpine:latest
-
Add the URL to a
Dockerfile
:FROM gitlab.example.com/groupname/dependency_proxy/containers/alpine:latest
-
GitLab pulls the Docker image from Docker Hub and caches the blobs on the GitLab server. The next time you pull the same image, GitLab gets the latest information about the image from Docker Hub, but serves the existing blobs from the GitLab server.
Reduce storage usage
Blobs are kept forever on the GitLab server, and there is no hard limit on how much data can be stored.
Using the API to clear the cache
To reclaim disk space used by image blobs that are no longer needed, use the Dependency Proxy API to clear the entire cache.
If you clear the cache, the next time a pipeline runs it must pull an image or tag from Docker Hub.
Cleanup policies
Enable cleanup policies from within GitLab
Introduced in GitLab 14.6
You can enable an automatic time-to-live (TTL) policy for the Dependency Proxy from the user interface. To do this, navigate to your group's Settings > Packages & Registries > Dependency Proxy and enable the setting to automatically clear items from the cache after 90 days.
Enable cleanup policies with GraphQL
Introduced in GitLab 14.4.
The cleanup policy is a scheduled job you can use to clear cached images that are no longer used, freeing up additional storage space. The policies use time-to-live (TTL) logic:
- The number of days is configured.
- All cached dependency proxy files that have not been pulled in that many days are deleted.
Use the GraphQL API to enable and configure cleanup policies:
mutation {
updateDependencyProxyImageTtlGroupPolicy(input:
{
groupPath: "<your-full-group-path>",
enabled: true,
ttl: 90
}
) {
dependencyProxyImageTtlPolicy {
enabled
ttl
}
errors
}
}
See the Getting started with GraphQL guide to learn how to make GraphQL queries.
When the policy is initially enabled, the default TTL setting is 90 days. Once enabled, stale dependency proxy files are queued for deletion each day. Deletion may not occur right away due to processing time. If the image is pulled after the cached files are marked as expired, the expired files are ignored and new files are downloaded and cached from the external registry.
Docker Hub rate limits and the Dependency Proxy
Introduced in GitLab 13.7.
Watch how to use the Dependency Proxy to help avoid Docker Hub rate limits.
In November 2020, Docker introduced rate limits on pull requests from Docker Hub. If your GitLab CI/CD configuration uses an image from Docker Hub, each time a job runs, it may count as a pull request. To help get around this limit, you can pull your image from the Dependency Proxy cache instead.
When you pull an image (by using a command like docker pull
or, in a .gitlab-ci.yml
file, image: foo:latest
), the Docker client makes a collection of requests:
- The image manifest is requested. The manifest contains information about how to build the image.
- Using the manifest, the Docker client requests a collection of layers, also known as blobs, one at a time.
The Docker Hub rate limit is based on the number of GET requests for the manifest. The Dependency Proxy caches both the manifest and blobs for a given image, so when you request it again, Docker Hub does not have to be contacted.
How does GitLab know if a cached tagged image is stale?
If you are using an image tag like alpine:latest
, the image changes
over time. Each time it changes, the manifest contains different information about which
blobs to request. The Dependency Proxy does not pull a new image each time the
manifest changes; it checks only when the manifest becomes stale.
Docker does not count HEAD requests for the image manifest towards the rate limit.
You can make a HEAD request for alpine:latest
, view the digest (checksum)
value returned in the header, and determine if a manifest has changed.
The Dependency Proxy starts all requests with a HEAD request. If the manifest has become stale, only then is a new image pulled.
For example, if your pipeline pulls node:latest
every five
minutes, the Dependency Proxy caches the entire image and only updates it if
node:latest
changes. So instead of having 360 requests for the image in six hours
(which exceeds the Docker Hub rate limit), you only have one pull request, unless
the manifest changed during that time.
Check your Docker Hub rate limit
If you are curious about how many requests to Docker Hub you have made and how many remain, you can run these commands from your runner, or even in a CI/CD script:
# Note, you must have jq installed to run this command
TOKEN=$(curl "https://auth.docker.io/token?service=registry.docker.io&scope=repository:ratelimitpreview/test:pull" | jq --raw-output .token) && curl --head --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/ratelimitpreview/test/manifests/latest" 2>&1 | grep --ignore-case RateLimit
...
The output is something like:
RateLimit-Limit: 100;w=21600
RateLimit-Remaining: 98;w=21600
This example shows the total limit of 100 pulls in six hours, with 98 pulls remaining.
Check the rate limit in a CI/CD job
This example shows a GitLab CI/CD job that uses an image with jq
and curl
installed:
hub_docker_quota_check:
stage: build
image: alpine:latest
tags:
- <optional_runner_tag>
before_script: apk add curl jq
script:
- |
TOKEN=$(curl "https://auth.docker.io/token?service=registry.docker.io&scope=repository:ratelimitpreview/test:pull" | jq --raw-output .token) && curl --head --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/ratelimitpreview/test/manifests/latest" 2>&1
Troubleshooting
Dependency Proxy Connection Failure
If a service alias is not set the docker:19.03.12
image is unable to find the
dind
service, and an error like the following is thrown:
error during connect: Get http://docker:2376/v1.39/info: dial tcp: lookup docker on 192.168.0.1:53: no such host
This can be resolved by setting a service alias for the Docker service:
services:
- name: ${CI_DEPENDENCY_PROXY_GROUP_IMAGE_PREFIX}/docker:18.09.7-dind
alias: docker