Gitlab EE - Gitlab Pages setup without wildcard domain

Question

I can't figure out how to setup Gitlab Pages on my self-hosted Gitlab instance without wildcard domains. For example, I have 1 server with 3 public IP addresses and domain names:

• 10.8.0.10 (git.example.com) - main GitLab instance
• 10.8.0.11 (registry.example.com) - container registry
• 10.8.0.12 (pages.example.com) - GitLab Pages

Then' I set up the Omnibus config /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb like that:

external_url 'https://git.example.com'
nginx['enable'] = true
nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['10.8.0.10']


registry_external_url 'https://registry.example.com'
registry_nginx['enable'] = true
registry_nginx['listen_addresses'] = ['10.8.0.11']
registry_nginx['ssl_certificate'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/git.example.com.crt"
registry_nginx['ssl_certificate_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/git.example.com.key"

pages_external_url 'https://pages.example.com'
pages_nginx['enable'] = false
gitlab_pages['enable'] = true
gitlab_pages['cert'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages.example.com.crt"
gitlab_pages['cert_key'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/pages.example.com.key"
gitlab_pages['external_http'] = ['10.8.0.12:80']
gitlab_pages['external_https'] = ['10.8.0.12:443']

For example, I have a project located on https://git.example.com/somegroupname/project. I can get an access to container registry of this project by https://registry.example.com/somegroupname/project and pull the Docker image with command docker pull registry.example.com/somegroupname/project.

I know that GitLab Pages set namespaces as the A-record. In my case, it sets up like https://somegroupname.pages.example.com/project, but I don't have an availability to use such domain names. Instead of that, I want to place the namespace in path like that:
https://pages.example.com/somegroupname/project
but I can't find any settings or parameters to enable this behavior, and it doesn't work with the current setup. All the pages stored correctly in default path /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared/pages/. Can please somebody help me?

Answer 1

That should now be supported with GitLab 16.7 (December 2023):

Use GitLab pages without a wildcard DNS

Previously, to create a GitLab Pages project, you needed a domain formatted like name.example.io or name.pages.example.io.
This requirement meant you had to set up wildcard DNS records and SSL/TLS certificates.

In GitLab 16.7, you can set up a GitLab Pages project without a DNS wildcard. This feature is an experiment.

Removing the requirement for wildcard certificates eases administrative overhead associated with GitLab pages. Some customers can’t use GitLab Pages because of organizational restrictions on wildcard DNS records or certificates.

We welcome feedback related to this feature in issue 434372.

See Documentation and Issue.