Provide large files to GitLab support


Zendesk has a maximum attachment size of 50MB per file.
Zendesk will not allow us to increase this limit any further.

Other methods

Here are some options in case you need to share files larger than the maximum attachment size in Zendesk with GitLab Support.

Compression

If you're sending a text file or an archive with mostly text files, then please compress it. Use either bz2 (preferred) or gzip (faster) compression and it should compress to a small percentage of its original size. Zip compression is fine if you're on Windows.
If this brings your file under the 50MB limit, then simply attach it to the ticket and be done. If not, then see below for more options.

File sharing services

Please feel free to use your own choice of file sharing service. Be aware that submitting potentially sensitive data to 3rd parties does carry a risk, so be sure to check with your security team for a properly vetted choice.

GitLab private project

  1. Sign up for a gitlab.com account if you don't already have one.
  2. Create a private project and upload your files there.
  3. Ask the Support Engineer(s) assisting you to provide you with their GitLab Handle.
  4. Invite the Support Engineer(s) to the project with the Reporter permission.

Use GNU split

Since the attachment is applied per file, we can split that one file into many and attach all of them to a ticket.
The split command is bundled in GNU coreutils, which should be installed on all Unix-like operating systems by default. Please avoid using alternatives like winzip, winrar, 7zip, etc. We've included an example below:

split -b <size> <source file> <prefix for new files>
split -b 19M source-file.tar.bz2 "target-file.tar.bz2."s

This will create many files in your current directory such as target-file.tar.bz2.aa and target-file.tar.bz2.ab. These files can be later joined with the cat command.

cat target-file.tar.bz2.* > joined-file.tar.bz2