If replicating over SSH, ensure the host key of the remote system(s) is already in the Gerrit user’s ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. The easiest way to add the host key is to connect once by hand with the command line:
sudo su -c 'ssh mirror1.us.some.org echo' gerrit2
NOTE: make sure the local user’s ssh keys format is PEM, here how to generate them:
ssh-keygen -m PEM -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"
Next, create $site_path/etc/replication.config as a Git-style config file, for example to replicate in parallel to four different hosts:
[remote "host-one"]
url = gerrit2@host-one.example.com:/some/path/${name}.git
[remote "pubmirror"]
url = mirror1.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror2.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror3.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
push = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
push = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
threads = 3
authGroup = Public Mirror Group
authGroup = Second Public Mirror Group
Then reload the replication plugin to pick up the new configuration:
ssh -p 29418 localhost gerrit plugin reload replication
To manually trigger replication at runtime, see SSH command start.
The replication plugin is designed to allow multiple primaries in a cluster to efficiently cooperate together via the replication event persistence subsystem. To enable this cooperation, the directory pointed to by the replication.eventsDirectory config key must reside on a shared filesystem, such as NFS. By default, simply pointing multiple primaries to the same eventsDirectory will enable some cooperation by preventing the same replication push from being duplicated by more than one primary.
To further improve cooperation across the cluster, the replication.distributionInterval config value can be set. With distribution enabled, the replication queues for all the nodes sharing the same eventsDirectory will reflect approximately the same outstanding replication work (i.e. tasks waiting in the queue). Replication pushes which are running will continue to only be visible in the queue of the node on which the push is actually happening. This feature helps administrators get a cluster wide view of outstanding replication tasks, while allowing replication tasks triggered by one primary to be fulfilled by another node which is less busy.
This enhanced replication work distribution allows the amount of replication work a cluster can handle to scale more evenly and linearly with the amount of primaries in the cluster. Adding more nodes to a cluster without distribution enabled will generally not allow the thread count per remote to be reduced without impacting service levels to those remotes. This is because without distribution, all events triggered by a node will only be fulfilled by the node which triggered the event, even if all the other nodes in the cluster are idle. This behavior implies that each node should be configured in a way that allows it alone to provide the level of service which each remote requires. However, with distribution enabled, it becomes possible to reduce the amount of replication threads configured per remote proportionally to the amount of nodes in the cluster, while maintaining the same approximate service level as before adding new nodes.
Threads per remote reduction without service impacts is possible with distribution, because when configuring a node it can be expected that other nodes will pick up some of the work it triggers. Then the node no longer needs to be configured as if it were the only node in the cluster. For example, if a remote requires 6 threads with one node to achieve acceptable service, it should only take 2 threads on 3 equivalently powered nodes to provide the same service level with distribution enabled. Scaling down such thread requirements per remote results in a reduced memory footprint per remote on each node in the cluster. This enables the nodes in the cluster to now scale to handle more remotes with the approximate same service level than without distribution. The amount of extra supported remotes then also scales approximately linearly with the extra nodes in a cluster.
replication.configThe optional file $site_path/etc/replication.config is a Git-style config file that controls the replication settings for the replication plugin.
The file is composed of one or more remote sections, each remote section provides common configuration settings for one or more destination URLs.
Each remote section uses its own thread pool. If pushing to multiple remotes, over differing types of network connections (e.g. LAN and also public Internet), its a good idea to put them into different remote sections, so that replication to the slower connection does not starve out the faster local one. The example file above does this.
In the keys below, the NAME portion is unused by this plugin, but must be unique to distinguish the different sections if more than one remote section appears in the file.
replication.config file is updated, without the need to restart the replication plugin. When the reload takes place, pending replication events based on old settings are discarded. By default, false.(retry 1) push aaa.com:/git/test.git [refs/heads/b1 refs/heads/b2 (+2)]
Can be overridden at remote-level by setting pushBatchSize.
By default, 0, which means that there are no limitations on number of refs to be transferred in a single push operation. Note that negative values are treated as 0.
Note that pushBatchSize is ignored when Cluster Replication is configured - when replication.distributionInterval has value > 0.
Turning this on is likely only useful when there are other processes (such as other masters in the same cluster) writing to the same persistence store. To ensure that updates are seen well before their replicationDelay expires when the distributor is used, the recommended value for this is approximately the smallest remote.NAME.replicationDelay divided by 5.
If two or more replication operations (to the same GIT and Ref) are scheduled at approximately the same time (and end up on different replication threads), there is a large probability that the last push to complete will fail with a remote “failed to update ref” error. This error may also occur due to a transient issue like file system being full which was previously returned as “failed to write” by git.
This option allows Gerrit to retry the replication push when the “failed to update ref” error is detected. Also retry when the error “failed to lock” is detected as that is the legacy string used by git.
A good value would be 3 retries or less, depending on how often you see updateRefError collisions in your server logs. A too highly set value risks keeping around the replication operations in the queue for a long time, and the number of items in the queue will increase with time.
Normally Gerrit will succeed with the replication during its first retry, but in certain edge cases (e.g. a mirror introduces a ref namespace with the same name as a branch on the master) the retry will never succeed.
The issue can also be mitigated somewhat by increasing the replicationDelay.
Default: 0 (disabled, i.e. never retry)
If both lockErrorMaxRetries and updateRefErrorMaxRetries are configured, then updateRefErrorMaxRetries takes precedence.
Default: 0 (disabled, i.e. never retry)
When a push operation reaches its maximum number of retries, the replication event is discarded from the queue and the remote destinations may remain out of sync.
Can be overridden at remote-level by setting replicationMaxRetries.
By default, pushes are retried indefinitely.
When scheduling a replication, the replication event is persisted under this directory. When the replication is done, the event is deleted. If plugin is stopped before all scheduled replications are done, the persisted events will not be deleted. When the plugin is started again, it will trigger all replications found under this directory.
For replication to work, is is important that atomic renames be possible from within any subdirectory of the eventsDirectory to within any other subdirectory of the eventsDirectory. This generally means that the entire contents of the eventsDirectory should live on the same filesystem.
When not set, defaults to the plugin’s data directory.
Within each URL value the magic placeholder ${name} is replaced with the Gerrit project name. This is a Gerrit specific extension to the otherwise standard Git URL syntax and it must be included in each URL so that Gerrit can figure out where each project needs to be replicated. ${name} may only be omitted if the remote refers to a single repository (i.e.: Exactly one remote.NAME.projects and that name’s value is a single project match.).
See git push for details on Git URL syntax.
The adminUrl can be used as an ssh alternative to the url option, but only related to repository creation. If not specified, the repository creation tries to follow the default way through the url value specified.
It is useful when the remote.NAME.url protocols do not allow repository creation although their usage is mandatory in the local environment. In that case, an alternative SSH url could be specified to repository creation.
To enable replication to different Gerrit instance use gerrit+http:// or gerrit+https:// as protocol name followed by hostname of another Gerrit server eg.
gerrit+http://replica2.my.org/
gerrit+https://replica3.my.org/
In this case replication will use Gerrit’s REST API to create/remove projects and update repository HEAD references.
NOTE: In order to replicate project deletion, the link:https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/admin/projects/plugins/delete-project delete-project[delete-project] plugin must be installed on the other Gerrit.
Backward compatibility notice
Before Gerrit v2.13 it was possible to enable replication to different Gerrit masters using gerrit+ssh:// as protocol name followed by hostname of another Gerrit server eg.
gerrit+ssh://replica1.my.org/
In that case replication would have used Gerrit’s SSH API to create/remove projects and update repository HEAD references.
The gerrit+ssh option is kept for backward compatibility, however the use-case behind it is not valid anymore since the introduction of Lucene indexes and the removal of ReviewDb, which would require a lot more machinery to setup a master to master replication scenario.
The gerrit+ssh option is still possible but is limited to the ability to replicate only regular Git repositories that do not contain any code-review or NoteDb information.
Using gerrit+ssh for replicating all Gerrit repositories would result in failures on the All-Users.git replication and would not be able to replicate changes magic refs and indexes across nodes.
git-receive-pack executable on the remote system, if using the SSH transport.
Defaults to git-receive-pack.
git-upload-pack executable on the remote system, if using the SSH transport.
Defaults to git-upload-pack.
+refs/heads/*:refs/heads/* would mirror only the active branches, but not the change refs under refs/changes/, or the tags under refs/tags/.
Note that prefixing a source refspec with + causes the replication to be done with a git push --force command. Be aware that when you are pushing to remote repositories that may have read/write access (e.g. GitHub) you may want to omit the + to prevent the risk of overwriting branches that have been modified on the remote.
Multiple push keys can be supplied, to specify multiple patterns to match against. In the example above, remote “pubmirror” uses two push keys to match both refs/heads/* and refs/tags/*, but excludes all others, including refs/changes/*.
Defaults to refs/*:refs/* (push all refs) if not specified, or +refs/*:refs/* (force push all refs) if not specified and gerrit.defaultForceUpdate is true.
Note that the refs/meta/config branch is only replicated when replicatePermissions is true, even if the push refspec is ‘all refs’.
A timeout should be large enough to mostly transfer the objects to the other side. 1 second may be too small for larger projects, especially over a WAN link, while 10-30 seconds is a much more reasonable timeout value.
Defaults to 0 seconds, wait indefinitely.
This is a Gerrit specific extension to the Git remote block.
By default, 15 seconds.
Cannot be set to a value lower than 3 seconds to avoid a tight loop of schedule/run which could cause 1K+ retries per second.
A configured value lower than 3 seconds will be rounded to 3 seconds.
By default, 3 seconds.
If a remote push operation fails because a remote server was offline, all push operations to the same destination URL are blocked, and the remote push is continuously retried unless the replicationMaxRetries value is set.
This is a Gerrit specific extension to the Git remote block.
By default, 1 minute.
When a push operation reaches its maximum number of retries the replication event is discarded from the queue and the remote destinations could be out of sync.
This is a Gerrit specific extension to the Git remote block.
By default, use replication.maxRetries.
When stopping the plugin, the shutdown will be delayed trying to drain the event queue.
The maximum delay is drainQueueAttempts * replicationDelay seconds.
When not set or set to 0, the queue is not drained and the pending replication events are cancelled.
By default, do not drain replication events.
By default, 1 thread.
authGroups may be specified within a single remote block to signify a wider access right. In the project administration web interface the read access can be specified for this group to control if a project should be replicated or not to the remote.
By default, replicates without group control, i.e. replicates everything to all remotes.
NOTE: If an authGroup is provided, and you want a complete mirror (for backup reasons or to run a Gerrit replica), at least one of the provided authGroups must have “Access Database” capability. Otherwise db refs will not be replicated.
If false, repositories are never created automatically on this remote.
By default, true, missing repositories are created.
By default, true, replicating everything.
By default, false, do not replicate project deletions.
By default, false, do not replicate hidden projects.
authGroup option).
By default, false, do not remove remote branches.
${name} placeholder, when the target remote repository is not served by Gerrit.
Github and Gitorious do not permit slashes “/” in repository names and will change them to dashes “-” at repository creation time.
If this setting is set to “dash”, slashes will be replaced with dashes in the remote repository name. If set to “underscore”, slashes will be replaced with underscores in the repository name.
Option basenameOnly makes ${name} to be only the basename (the part after the last slash) of the repository path on the Gerrit server, e.g. ${name} of foo/bar/my-repo.git would be my-repo.
NOTE: The use of repository name translation using
remoteNameStylemay lead to dangerous situations if there are multiple repositories that may be mapped to the same target name. For instance when mapping/foo/my-repo.gittomy-repousing “basenameOnly” would also map/bar/my-repo.gitto the samemy-repoleading to conflicts where commits can be lost between the two repositories replicating to the same targetmy-repo.
By default, slash, i.e. remote names will contain slashes as they do in Gerrit.
Values starting with a caret ^ are treated as regular expressions. ^foo/(bar|baz) would match the projects foo/bar, and foo/baz. Regular expressions have to fully match the project name. So the above example would not match foo/bar2, while ^foo/(bar|baz).* would.
Projects may be excluded from replication by using a regular expression with inverse match. ^(?:(?!PATTERN).)*$ will exclude any project that matches.
Values that are not regular expressions and end in * are treated as wildcard matches. Wildcards match projects whose name agrees from the beginning until the trailing *. So foo/b* would match the projects foo/b, foo/bar, and foo/baz, but neither foobar, nor bar/foo/baz.
Values that are neither regular expressions nor wildcards are treated as single project matches. So foo/bar matches only the project foo/bar, but no other project.
By default, replicates without matching, i.e. replicates everything to all remotes.
default: 15 minutes
pushBatchSize are to be pushed then they are divided into batches and pushed sequentially one-by-one.
By default it falls back to gerrit.pushBatchSize value (which is 0 if not set, which means that there are no limitations on number of refs to be transferred in a single push operation). Note that negative values are treated as 0.
Note that pushBatchSize is ignored when Cluster Replication is configured - when replication.distributionInterval has value > 0.
replicationThe optional directory $site_path/etc/replication contains Git-style config files that controls the replication settings for the replication plugin. When present all remote sections from replication.config file are ignored.
Files are composed of one remote section. Multiple remote sections or any other section makes the file invalid and skipped by the replication plugin. File name defines remote section name. Each section provides common configuration settings for one or more destination URLs. For more details how to setup remote sections please refer to the replication.config section.
Static configuration in $site_path/etc/replication.config:
[gerrit]
autoReload = true
replicateOnStartup = false
[replication]
lockErrorMaxRetries = 5
maxRetries = 5
Remote sections in $site_path/etc/replication directory:
$site_path/etc/replication/host-one.config[remote]
url = gerrit2@host-one.example.com:/some/path/${name}.git
$site_path/etc/replication/pubmirror.config [remote]
url = mirror1.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror2.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror3.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
push = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
push = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
threads = 3
authGroup = Public Mirror Group
authGroup = Second Public Mirror Group
Replication plugin resolves config files to the following configuration:
[gerrit]
autoReload = true
replicateOnStartup = false
[replication]
lockErrorMaxRetries = 5
maxRetries = 5
[remote "host-one"]
url = gerrit2@host-one.example.com:/some/path/${name}.git
[remote "pubmirror"]
url = mirror1.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror2.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
url = mirror3.us.some.org:/pub/git/${name}.git
push = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
push = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
threads = 3
authGroup = Public Mirror Group
authGroup = Second Public Mirror Group
secure.configThe optional file $site_path/secure.config is a Git-style config file that provides secure values that should not be world-readable, such as passwords. Passwords for HTTP remotes can be obtained from this file.
~/.ssh/configGerrit reads and caches the ~/.ssh/config at startup, and supports most SSH configuration options. For example:
Host host-one.example.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_hostone
PreferredAuthentications publickey
Host mirror*.us.some.org
User mirror-updater
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_pubmirror
PreferredAuthentications publickey
IdentityFile and PreferredAuthentications must be defined for all the hosts. Here an example of the minimum ~/.ssh/config needed:
Host *
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
PreferredAuthentications publickey
Supported options:
SSH authentication must be by passwordless public key, as there is no facility to read passphrases on startup or passwords during the SSH connection setup, and SSH agents are not supported from Java.
Host keys for any destination SSH servers must appear in the user’s ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, and must be added in advance, before Gerrit starts. If a host key is not listed, Gerrit will be unable to connect to that destination, and replication to that URL will fail.