I have been looking for a quick way to create a runner for GitLab-CI, here is how I ended up doing it:

The base docker

First, we will start from Sameer Naik GitLab-CI Runner docker:

docker pull sameersbn/gitlab-ci-runner:latest

Configuring the Runner

Mapped Folder

You will need a mapped folder to store the configuration, so let’s create one:

mkdir -p /opt/gitlab-ci-runner

Note: The directory path does not matter, if you chose another one just change it accordingly in the mapping (-v) below

Runner Setup

A GitLab-CI Runner requires your GitLab URL and a Token, those are provided in your GitLab-CI Project Runners page.

Hopefully setting that up is fairly easy:

docker run --name gitlab-ci-runner -it --rm \
    -v /opt/gitlab-ci-runner:/home/gitlab_ci_runner/data \
  sameersbn/gitlab-ci-runner:latest app:setup

Note: you might need to sudo that command A little explanation on the command parameters:

--name Gives a name to your container, we will need that later
-it will give us an interactive TTY
--rm will automatically remove the container if it exists
-v mounts a volume
app:setup will run the GitLab-CI setup script

This will ask you for the URL and Token to add your Runner. Once completed, you should see the Runner showing up on GitLab-CI

Accessing the container

Your runner might be “ready” you still need to install all the requirements for whatever script will be running (maybe you need PHP, Python, pip…), and you might already know that installing a SSH Server on a Docker container is just not the way to go.

So what to do? Easy:

docker exec -it gitlab-ci-runner bash

Note: This will only work for docker version 1.3.0 or higher.

Running the Runner

Once all your CI runner requirements installed, you have to run the GitLab-CI runner script before you exit the container:

root@GitLab-ci-runner:/home/gitlab_ci_runner/gitlab-ci-runner/bin# nohup ./runner &
[1] 117

You can now exit the container, you runner is good to go.

What’s left to do?

Everything that is left to do is in your GitLab-CI.

Defining a job

You have to define your job (i.e. What will the runner actually do) in the GitLab-CI Job section of your project. It will run in the root of a freshly cloned version of your commits/tags so no need to worry about paths.

Activate Testing in GitLab for the project

In GitLab you need to go in your project Settings -> Services -> GitLab CI -> Test Settings to be sure everything is ok.

And that should be it!

Start / Stop the container

docker stop gitlab-ci-runner
docker start gitlab-ci-runner
docker restart gitlab-ci-runner

Other considerations

As it is, your container is not easy to scale, backup, share… One possibility is to (once your requirements are set up) to use docker commit and then export the container in an archive.

If possible you can also do the requirements install using a dockerfile, that will make your runner incredibly easy to re-create should the need arise.

Posted with : Linux , Git , Docker , Other

Creating a GitLab-CI Runner with docker

The essential on how to quickly set up GitLab-CI Runner with Docker