You can actually accidentally remove yourself from group as only member.

I have lost control over group on gitlab.com. Now the group is in "Limbo". No one controls it.

What's happened/how to replicate?

I wanted to add some members to the group since the other members names are similar to mine I accidentally added myself along with others as a master of the group. In that point group didn't have any owners. I've tried to remove the master level from myself with clicking the red minus. I thought it will automatically return owner status. But I wasn't the member any more. Other guy was thinking if he also remove himself the group will destroy itself, but NO. He also removed himself :)

Now the group hangs in the middle air, without owner and I CAN NOT create the group with the same name as it says the group already exists. So there it is.. the statement od the permissions.md file "Any user can remove themselves from a group, unless they are the last Owner of the group." is NOT VALID :)

@joviczarko I reproduced the issue above. But I think @sytses should decide wether this behaviour is acceptable. In the mean time, you can still access the group with an Admin user in the Admin area.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Login as (normal) user.
2. Create a group.
3. Verify that you are granted the 'owner' access level.
4. Add yourself as member to the group with the 'master' access level.

This effectively changes your access level from 'owner' to 'master', therefore enabling to delete yourself as member of the group.

Hey, @JanDintel,

Thanks for your attention. I am glad if I've helped.

Meanwhile.. :) I can't log in into the gitlab.com/groups/groupname (if you have think to that Admin area), since I am constantly getting 404. Other member have left the group with thinking that ownership will be reverted to me... So the group do not have any members... Maybe I didn't understood you well, but I am unable to find any other option to acces the group...

@joviczarko I didn't think about to option that you were using the hosted Gitlab version. In that case there's no Admin area, which you can access in the meantime.

A possible solution could be to add a validation to ensure that there's always an owner left for the group. Unless the action is performed by an Admin.

OK. Thanks again. So, there it goes... This is clearly a problem. Who else wants a ghost groups? :)

Reassigned to @sytses

Assignee removed

@joviczarko please don't assign issues to other people. systse has already been mentioned. That is enough. ;)

@patricio can you look into this? thanks!

@sytses I will try to replicate it soon.

@vsizov Can you please help scope out the work necessary to prevent the last owner from leaving a group or project? We get a fair number of support requests from people that do this on GitLab.com.

Milestone changed to 8.2

I assigned milestone. Not too much work. I have no time right now, but I think I will handle it soon.

Thanks @vsizov

Reassigned to @DouweM

mentioned in merge request !1708 (closed)

mentioned in issue #3385 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !1815 (merged)

Status changed to closed by merge request !1815 (merged)

mentioned in commit 8a1cafeb

mentioned in commit d431f3ec

mentioned in merge request !14785