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Database Lab access using the pgai Ruby gem

WARNING: The pgai gem has not yet been updated to use the new database lab instances so you will only be able to access gitlab-production-main and gitlab-production-ci using this tool.

@mbobin created the pgai Ruby Gem that greatly simplifies access to a database clone, with support for:

If you have AllFeaturesUser psql access, you can follow the steps below to configure the pgai Gem:

  1. To get started, you need to gather some values from the Postgres.ai instances page:

    1. Go to the instance that you want to configure and the on right side of the screen.

    2. Under Connection, select Connect. The menu might be collapsed.

      A dialog with everything that's needed for configuration appears, using this format:

      dblab init --url "http://127.0.0.1:1234" --token TOKEN --environment-id <environment-id>
      ssh -NTML 1234:localhost:<environment-port> <postgresai-user>@<postgresai-proxy> -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  2. Add the following snippet to your SSH configuration file at ~/.ssh/config, replacing the variable values:

    Host pgai-proxy
      HostName <postgresai-proxy>
      User <postgresai-user>
      IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
  3. Run the following command so you can accept the server key fingerprint:

    ssh pgai-proxy
  4. Run the following commands:

    gem install pgai
    
    # Grab an access token: https://console.postgres.ai/gitlab/tokens
    # GITLAB_USER is your GitLab handle
    pgai config --prefix=$GITLAB_USER
    
    # Grab the respective port values from https://console.postgres.ai/gitlab/instances
    # for the instances you'll be using (in this case, for the `main` database instance)
    pgai env add --alias main --id <environment-id> --port <environment-port> -n <database_name>
  5. Once this one-time configuration is done, you can use pgai connect to connect to a particular database. For instance, to connect to the main database:

    pgai connect main
  6. Once done with the clone, you can destroy it:

    pgai destroy main