Setting up personal GitLab runner¶

This document provides instructions on setting up your own personal gitlab runner

Initiate gitlab runner¶

On the project, where you need to setup GitLab runner goto Settings -> CICD -> Runners (Expand)
Click on New project Runner as shown below:
Give a name to the runner, and some tags, and click on Create Runner

Setup runner machine¶

Create a VM on OpenStack
SSH onto the VM

Install GitLab runner¶

Download the binary for your system

sudo curl -L --output /usr/local/bin/gitlab-runner https://gitlab-runner-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/latest/binaries/gitlab-runner-linux-amd64

Give it permission to execute

   sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gitlab-runner

Create a GitLab Runner user

sudo useradd --comment 'GitLab Runner' --create-home gitlab-runner --shell /bin/bash

Install and run as a service

sudo gitlab-runner install --user=gitlab-runner --working-directory=/home/gitlab-runner
sudo gitlab-runner start

Register runner¶

From the Register runner page copy the code from 1st step:

sudo gitlab-runner register  --url $GITLAB_INSTANCE_URL  --token $TOKEN

While registering the runner, give the local name for your runner.
You can choose any executor for the runner, in this case we would choose docker as the executor.

Start runner¶

You can manually verify that the runner is available to pick up jobs.

sudo gitlab-runner start

Install docker engine on runner¶

Since we used docker executor we need to setup a docker engine on the runner machine. Follwoing instructions are for installing it on ubuntu 22.04

Add Docker's official GPG key:¶

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

Add the repository to Apt sources:¶

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Install the latest version of docker engine¶

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Verify that docker is running¶

sudo docker run hello-world

Verify runner is running via GitLab¶

On the project, where you setup GitLab runner goto Settings -> CICD -> Runners (Expand)
If all the steps have succeeded, then you should see a green symbol next to the runner that you created.