Problem

You would like to import an existing Gitlab project, through an export file, to a new self hosted instance of Gitlab, but using the Web UI, even after changing the max-body-size in the ingress deployment you end up having the error message

Request Entity Too Large

Solution

There is another way to import the exported file, but is not documented anywhere as it is classed as EXPERIMENTAL from Gitlab.

You can copy the exported file to the gitlab-toolbox pod

kubectl --kubeconfig ~/.kube/gitlab_config cp local_export.tar.gz gitlab-toolbox-xxx-xxx:/tmp/

You can then login to the gitlab-toolbox pod

kubectl --kubeconfig ~/.kube/gitlab_config -n gitlab-system exec -it gitlab-toolbox-xxx-xxx -- bash

get to directory with the application

cd srv/gitlab

and finally use the rake task gitlab:import_export:import to import your project

git@gitlab-toolbox-xxx-xxx:/srv/gitlab$ bundle exec rake gitlab:import_export:import[your_new_gitlab_username,namespace_path,project_path,/tmp/2022-06-14_14-53-007_export.tar.gz]