Provide large files to GitLab support
A Support Engineer can generate and provide you with FTP credentials for your ticket specifically to allow for the uploading of larger files (that cannot be uploaded via the ticket system). The FTP system will automatically delete these files within an hour of the ticket being marked as Closed.
Uploading a file via CLI
To upload a file via CLI, access FTP using the ftp HOST command (replacing HOST with the host given to you by the support engineer).
If the command is not available, you might want to install it using a command such as sudo apt-get ftp or brew install inetutils.
After running the ftp command, you should be asked for the username to use (provided to you by the support engineer on the ticket).
After entering that, you would then provide the password (also provided to you by the support engineer on the ticket).
Once fully logged in, you can upload a file using the FTP put path/to/file command (replacing path/to/file with the local path to the file you wish to upload). You will also need to ensure files are uploaded to the /files/ directory on the FTP server.
As an example, uploading the local file Docs/logs.zip would be done using the FTP command put Docs/logs.zip files/logs.zip.
Once you are done uploading the file, you can exit FTP by using the FTP command bye.
You can also use curl to upload a file using FTP via the following command: curl -T testfile.txt ftp://<username>:<password>@<host>/files/.
Download a file via CLI
To download a file via CLI, access FTP using the ftp HOST command (replacing HOST with the host given to your by the support engineer).
If the command is not available, you might want to install it using a command such as sudo apt-get ftp or brew install inetutils.
After running the ftp command, you should be asked for the username to use (provided to you by the support engineer on the ticket).
After entering that, you would then provide the password (also provided to you by the support engineer on the ticket).
Once fully logged in, you can upload a file using the FTP get path/to/file command (replacing path/to/file with the server path to the file you wish to upload).
As an example, uploading the server file files/logs.zip would be done using the FTP command get files/logs.zip.
Once you are done downloading the file, you can exit FTP by using the FTP command bye.
You can also use curl to download a file using FTP via the following command: curl -o testfile.txt ftp://<username>:<password>@<host>/files/testfile.txt.
Some other tools you could use
While not in any way promoted or supported by GitLab Support, some other FTP tools that are available:
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.
This is a fairly straight-forward option. Sign up for a gitlab.com account if you don't already have one. Then create a private project and invite the Support Engineer(s) assisting you with Reporter access or higher. You can find the GitLab handle of the support engineer(s) you need to add by searching for the respective engineer(s) on our team page.
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