Cannot merge project

We had to restore our gitlab to 17.2.1. under Centos 7 It isn’t a instance that has lots of traffic but for some reason we are seeing problems: We had tried 17.3.1 but for some reason it stopped logins, so we restored in time.

One of our users states:

I can create branches, add files, and commit. But once I try to merge, GitLab tells me the branch doesn’t exist.

Although I was able to go through update/merge completely so I believe it is something to do with their project. I did run the repository check for the project and it clears. I found something about rails having inconsistent cache, but the instructions seem vague or I can’t generate the proper options.

What is the best way to proceed?

Yeah, it turns out something in the OS and caching was stopping it. We were able to repair it using one of the hints in the document and adding the exec flag to the filesystem.