Encountering gitmodulesUrl: disallowed submodule url error when running repository check

Description

  • Repo check reports: error in blob xxxx: gitmodulesUrl: disallowed submodule url: ../..//xxxxx/xxxxxx.git

Environment

Issue can potentially be reported in a Self-Managed environment running 17.0+ during a repository check.

  • Impacted offerings:

    • GitLab Self-Managed

  • Impacted versions:

    • 17.x to current

Cause

This is a Known Issue from 17.x as a result of more strict repository consistency checks being enforced. This new behavior comes from a change in upstream Git, whereby this check was added. It is therefore not a Gitaly issue specifically.

Solution

The recommended solution is to resolve the .gitmodules inconsistency that's causing the error, as mentioned in this issue. Git supports ignoring objects to be checked using the .git-fsck-skiplist configuration. The following should allow the fsck check to pass without complaints.

Here's an example of how to do it:

$ cat <<EOF >.git-fsck-skiplist
> # invalid submodule path
> 19a97d3b70760c74b780c8134e33f5392292c2e6
> EOF
$ git config fsck.skipList .git-fsck-skiplist

Workaround

Administrators can override repository consistency checks

Additional information

The change was added to the git fsck checks, owned and managed by Git. GitLab and the Gitaly team could override the default checks. Gitaly issue 5641 was opened to re-evaluate what default checks GitLab disables in Analyze exceptions to the git fsck command.

Related links

Reference 2 other stackoverflow posts on how to actually correct the git history to exclude the offending blob:

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