# Gitlab LFS hanging builds **URL:** \ **Category:** Support\ **Tags:** deployment\ **Created:** [February 12, 2020, 8:43am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816 "2020-02-12T08:43:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![qoouep](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/qoouep/32/6670_2.png) [@qoouep](https://answers.netlify.com/u/qoouep)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2020, 8:43am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/1 "2020-02-12T08:43:34Z")
Hi, I’m trying to push a change to my site, but it’s hanging on the build. I added lfs hosted on Gitlab in this change, so I suspect that the issue is related to that. My builds stop at: 12:14:37 AM: Preparing Git Reference merge-requests/88/head Is there an issue with using Gitlab LFS to host files? I don’t need any of the Netlify LFS features, and I need these files across 3 Netlify sites, so I’d like to stick with Gitlab LFS. Is it possible to use Gitlab LFS with Netlify sites? Thanks, Chris ---
**Author:** ![luke](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/luke/32/39_2.png) [@luke](https://answers.netlify.com/u/luke)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 2:43am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/2 "2020-02-13T02:43:14Z")
Hi, @qoouep, and thank you for joining our Netlify community site. If you are using Git LFS (but not Netlify Large Media) an environment variable can be used to the our build system to do a `git lfs clone` for the repo. That environment variable is `GIT_LFS_ENABLED` and setting that to `true` . This can be set at “Site Name” \> Settings \> Build & deploy \> Environment in our web app or in the `netlify.toml` configuration file for the site. Would you please confirm that environment variable is used or test it if it is not? If it is set and there are still issues, please reply anytime. We’ll be happy to troubleshoot further. 👍 ---
**Author:** ![qoouep](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/qoouep/32/6670_2.png) [@qoouep](https://answers.netlify.com/u/qoouep)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 6:27am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/3 "2020-02-13T06:27:24Z")
I was able to get it to work! I have a bit of feedback though. 1. It’s pretty bad UX for builds to hang instead of surfacing errors. Are there error messages that get swallowed here? Could the site use better messaging here? 2. Initially I thought it wasn’t working. I was putting my entire assets folder in lfs, and my favicons weren’t loading. It turns out that for some reason specifically the .ico files were not getting pulled in, and were loading as pointer data when I went to /favicon.ico. I was able to fix this for myself by excluding the .ico files from LFS, but this is kind of strange to me. Why was this happening? Will it miss other files? ---
**Author:** ![luke](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/luke/32/39_2.png) [@luke](https://answers.netlify.com/u/luke)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2020, 9:47am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/4 "2020-02-17T09:47:11Z")
Hi, @qoouep, I’d like to research this further before filing a new issue (as I think it may match an existing issue). Would you please send us a link to the deploy with the error above (and you can just send the deploy id from the end of the URL if you prefer)? This will tell me if there is a swallowed error we could surface. Regarding question two about the .ico file, this isn’t one of the file type which is clone in binary format. The defaults as listed here: > To get the `git lfs clone` to include that file extention, an additional environment variable is required, that being `GIT_LFS_SMUDGE_FILTER`. If you want to include .ico files in addition to the current defaults, this should be set like so (in the Netlify UI only as it won’t work in the repo itself): ```plaintext GIT_LFS_SMUDGE_FILTER="*.jpg,*.png,*.jpeg,*.svg,*.gif,*.pdf,*.mp4,*.bmp,*.ico" ``` We do have an open issue to update our documentation to better cover third-party Git LFS configurations like these. Again, a link to the deploy will help confirm the next steps for question one above. ---
**Author:** ![qoouep](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/qoouep/32/6670_2.png) [@qoouep](https://answers.netlify.com/u/qoouep)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 11:14am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/5 "2020-02-18T11:14:21Z")
Here are a couple: 5e43acc92b1f280008df501a 5e43bef53879f200084b5411 Is there a reason why the files can’t be detected automatically with git lfs ls-files or something? ---
**Author:** ![luke](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/netlify/user_avatar/answers.netlify.com/luke/32/39_2.png) [@luke](https://answers.netlify.com/u/luke)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2020, 10:28am UTC](https://answers.netlify.com/t/gitlab-lfs-hanging-builds/8816/6 "2020-02-19T10:28:33Z")
Hi, @qoouep, I did confirm there is no error message being suppressed. I filed a feature request here to not filter the Git LFS tracked files when `GIT_LFS_SMUDGE=1` is used: > > > Currently the build image only clones the actual file contents for Git LFS track…ed files for file extensions listed here: > > https://github.com/netlify/build-image/blob/xenial/buildbot-git-config#L2 > > Quoting: > > \`\`\`text > fetchinclude = \*.jpg,\*.png,\*.jpeg,\*.svg,\*.gif,\*.pdf,\*.mp4,\*.bmp > \`\`\` > > This behavior can be overridden by setting \`GIT\_LFS\_FETCH\_INCLUDE \` to a more inclusive list in the build environment with that environment variable. > > I wonder if we might be better off never filtering and always cloning the any Git LFS files regardless of filetype. If there are other questions about this, please let us know.