GoCD Configuration repository

GoCD's configuration is version controlled in a local git repository - config.git hosted on the same machine as the GoCD server. The repo is available at <GoCD server installation directory>/db/config.git. Any changes to the config, either through file-system, API or GoCD configuration UI is saved as a new commit in this repo. This allows auditing of all changes made to the configuration.

NOTE: This repo must not be altered externally as this will lead to errors in GoCD.

Garbage collection

With time, this repository grows in size and can considerably slow down config save operations. One way to tackle this is to run git gc manually on the repo (read more). However, doing this at the wrong time (say, when the server is running and trying to finish a config save operation) can cause problems.

So, GoCD has in-built garbage collection for this git repository and it can be configured to run on a periodic basis. However, since this activity can potentially take a long time to run when GC happens for the first time around, the feature is turned off by default. GoCD server periodically checks if the loose-object count exceeds a preset threshold and displays a warning message. This is a cue for users to enable periodic GC on their servers. Here are the steps you need to follow (and in this order) to enable periodic GC for the config repository:

Stop the GoCD server
Take a backup of the whole config.git directory (rememeber, there is a hidden .git directory in it)
Run git gc manually, once, in that directory as the user that the GoCD server runs under. On Unix/Linux, this is usually the "go" user. Do not run this as the root user. If you do, make sure that you run chown -R go:go /path/to/config.git to make sure that the ownership of that directory is proper.
Once you've done that, you can now set these system properties mentioned below, to change the behavior of the periodic garbage collection. At the very least, you should set the go.config.repo.gc.periodic system property to Y so that it is enabled. You can refer to the documentation to find out how to set these arguments for your Windows and Linux servers.
Start the server and verify that the properties you've set are reflected in the system. The section at the end of this page has details about it.

System properties that affect periodic garbage collection

Property: go.config.repo.gc.periodic

Default value: N

This enables the periodic garbage collection of config.git repo. To enable this feature - set the value to Y

Property: go.config.repo.gc.aggressive

Default value: Y

This option will cause GC to more aggressively optimize the repository at the expense of taking much more time. It can be made non-aggressive by setting this value to N. It is recommended to set this option to N if the system property go.config.repo.gc.cron is set up to run git gc frequently.

Property: go.config.repo.gc.cron

Default value: 0 0 7 ? * SUN

Cron expression to specify garbage collector execution time with default set to 7:00 am on sundays. Check documentation for help on cron syntax. For linux users, while overriding go.config.repo.gc.cron you need to escape special shell characters such * using a backward-slash. For example:

GO_SERVER_SYSTEM_PROPERTIES="$GO_SERVER_SYSTEM_PROPERTIES -Dgo.config.repo.gc.cron='0 0 7 1/1 \* \?'"

The above cron will set to run git gc at 7 am every day for every month.

Property: go.config.repo.gc.warning.looseobject.threshold

Default value: 10000

If loose object count grows beyond this threshold, a warning is displayed in the server health messages popup

Property: go.config.repo.gc.expire

Default value 24 hours

This option will specify the expiration time for git gc so that each unreferenced, loose object which has been created or modified after or at the time specified will not be pruned. Only older objects may be pruned. Specify this propery in hours.

Property: go.config.repo.gc.check.interval

Default value: 28800000

Frequency of checking for loose object count, specified in milliseconds with default set to 8 hours.

Verifying that these properties are set:

Once you've set the properties with the values you want, you should verify that the values reflect accurately on the server, when it comes back up. As an administrator, if you access /go/api/support (meaning, http://your-go-server/go/api/support), then you should be able to find those properties in that page, with the values you set. If you don't see them, or see them with wrong values, you'll need to see whether you've set them correctly.

Config Repository