We finally found the solution and it had nothing to do with GitLab itself. The issue was with the git OS user - it's grace logins have expired. the 'Broken pipe' error with no other errors in the logs was really not very helpful in troubleshooting.
Anyways solved now. Thx a lot for assistance! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GitLab" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gitlabhq+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gitlabhq/9857d46f-8f27-437d-8469-a3d4780f26ef%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.