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GitLab "Job's log exceeded limit" error

When executing a GitLab job that collects verbose (-v) or debug (--debug) logs from Semgrep, you may see the following error message:

Job's log exceeded limit of 4194304 bytes.
Job execution will continue but no more output will be collected.

GitLab normally limits CI job logs to around 4 MB in size, and verbose Semgrep logs can exceed this size limit, leading to the error.

Solution: Save the log as an artifact​

You can save larger log files using artifacts to create a job artifact from the log file.

To do that:

  1. Update the semgrep ci command to redirect logs to a file: semgrep ci --debug &> semgrep.log.
  2. Add the resulting log file to the artifacts section of the CI configuration.

Here is an example based on the sample GitLab CI/CD configuration:

semgrep:
  image: semgrep/semgrep
  script:
    - semgrep ci --debug &> semgrep.log
  rules:
    - if: $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_IID
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
  variables:
    SEMGREP_APP_TOKEN: $SEMGREP_APP_TOKEN
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - semgrep.log

You can download the full log from several locations, including the "Job artifacts" area in the job.

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