How to prevent group creation in GitLab

Question

I have setup GitLab 7.12 in my firm. But users start creating groups (and groups and groups ...) and it will become a total mess very soon. Does anyone know how to restrict groups creation to administrators of the platform ?

The idea is to have people creating projects in their personal space, and reserving groups for official ones.

Answer 1

For an Omnibus install, the correct place is:

   /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
      gitlab_rails['gitlab_default_can_create_group'] = false

Then you'll need to execute sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure and sudo gitlab-ctl restart to apply the changes.

Answer 2

1. Enter the Admin control panel
2. Select 'Users'
3. Select the user(s) in question and click 'Edit'
4. Scroll down to 'Access' and un-tick 'Can Create Group'

If you want to disable group creation for new users, at the moment you will have to edit the gitlab.yml, specifically the setting default_can_create_group, and set it to false.

See gitlab.yml#L63@712d1768.

Answer 3

For existing users, you can also use the following command on gitlab-rails console:

irb(main):001:0> User.update_all can_create_group:false

Answer 4

And for old users, use something like (in rails console):

irb(main):012:0> @users.each do |u|
irb(main):013:1*  u.can_create_group= false
irb(main):014:1> u.save
irb(main):015:1> end

Answer 5

For old users, the GitLab Users API: User modification (a REST API) can also be used for this purpose (set the value of can_create_group to false) and can be easily used for bulk changes in a for loop:

curl --request PUT https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/users/:id?can_create_group=false

Note: Please have a look at available authentication methods at GitLab API Authentication.