SSH repository mirroring stopped working after updating from 17.11.7 to 18.2.8

Problem to solve

I recently updated my self managed gitlab-ee docker from 17.11.7 to 18.2.8. It is a docker image running on a rocky 8 host. The host is fips enabled. I passed the environment variable openssl_force_fips_mode = 0 at creation to deal with the known issue with gitlab higher than 18 running in a docker image on a fips enabled host because of the update to Ubuntu starting in 18.

After the upgrade, I can push and pull with ssh to all my local repositories. The problem comes with the ssh push mirrors I had set up for several of my repositories. They were working in 17.11.7 and stopped working immediately after the upgrade. The error they throw now is:
get remote references: create git ls-remote, exit status 128, stderror: “PRNG is not seeded”

This is the same error that sshd throws if you don’t pass the environment variable I mentioned, but the variable is there and sshd is working fine. I tried creating new keys, but it won’t detect the ssh host keys when I try and even if I manually paste them in, it still throws this error. The other repository I mirror too only accepts ssh, so I can’t try https and they don’t have the option to do pull mirroring from their side. Not sure what steps to take next.

If it worked previously in older Gitlab versions without using the FIPS workaround, that would suggest a regression in Gitlab. At which point, you’d be better opening an issue here: Issues · GitLab.org / GitLab · GitLab so that the Devs can fix what stopped working and put it back to how it was previously.

Latest version is 18.5.1 though, so might be worthwhile updating fully in case they already fixed it.

I tested upgrading my sandbox to 18.5.1 and it has the same issue.