CI/CD pipeline with rsync became very slow

GitLab CI/CD
1

Problem to solve

I have a CI pipeline for my website projects to build the site and deploy it to the web server. For about a week now, I’ve noticed a significant increase in build time without changing anything in the pipeline. Upon closer inspection, it’s the rsync command, which uploads all the files to the server, that suddenly takes much longer.

For existing projects, the deploy step used to take around 2 minute and has now increased to up to 7 minutes. For a new project, the time for the initial deployment has even exceeded 45 minutes (which used to be around 5 minutes).

What could be causing this? Has something changed with the runners? Or have restrictions been introduced for the free plan?

Steps to reproduce

Here’s an example of such a pipeline. I use this setup for all my projects: .gitlab-ci.yml · main · Patrick Müller / parallactic.ch · GitLab

And here’s the pipeline overview with a clear increase in the latest one: Pipelines · Patrick Müller / parallactic.ch · GitLab

Versions

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  • Self-managed
  • GitLab.com SaaS
  • Self-hosted Runners
2

I answer my own question. After some investigation it turned out that the web server was affected by a bug in the kernel. Downgrading the server to linux-image-6.1.0-23-amd64 helped and the pipelines are within the usual running time.