Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
112 lines (82 loc) · 4.09 KB

gitlab-runner.md

File metadata and controls

112 lines (82 loc) · 4.09 KB

Runner for GitLab Pipelines

Author: Swetha Anand Date: 1/9/2023

Overview

GitLab requires a runner to run the CI/CD jobs in a pipeline. GitLab Runner is an application that could be used to run the jobs. The GitLab Runner can be installed in many ways, the below approach refers to installing the GitLab Runner using helm charts. More details on installation guide for GitLab Runner can be found here

Prerequistes

  • AKS cluster. More details to Spin up an AKS cluster can be found here
  • GitLab account.

Steps for creating a GitLab Runner using values.yaml file using helm approach

  • Set the local kube config file to use the above created AKS resource and create a namespace for GitLab Runner
az login
az account set --subscription <subscriptionid>
az aks get-credentials --resource-group <rg name> --name <aks cluster name>
kubectl get pods -A
kubectl create namespace gitlab-runner
  • Next, Create a values.yaml in your local. Sample can be found here
  • Configure the below values in your local values.yaml
replicas: <number of replicas>
gitlabUrl: <gitlab-host-for-the-gitlab-runner> #ex:https://gitlab.com/
runnerRegistrationToken: "runner-registration-token" 
rbac:
  create: true
runners:
  config: |
    [[runners]]
      [runners.kubernetes]
        namespace = "{{.Release.Namespace}}"
        image = "ubuntu:20.04"
        privileged = true
      [[runners.kubernetes.volumes.empty_dir]]
        name = "docker-certs"
        mount_path = "/certs/client"
        medium = "Memory"
 tags: "runner-tag" #ex:abcrunner

Note: Group runner registration tokens can be found under https://gitlabhost.com/--groups--/-/runners , each group will be associated with its own registration token Note: You need to have OWNER permissions for the group to obtain the group runner registration tokens

img

Refer to the link in references below for more information on types of GitLab Runners.

Installing GitLab Runner using the above local values.yaml with helm install

cd to <dir/to/values.yaml>
helm install --namespace <gitlabnamespace> gitlab-runner gitlab/gitlab-runner -f values.yaml

Once the runners are sucessfully installed they can be verified under group/CICD/Runners as below

img

Upgrading a GitLab Runner

To upgrade the helm deployment, uninstall the GitLab Runner using helm uninstall, make changes to values.yaml and redeploy it using the above steps

helm uninstall gitlab-runner --namespace <gitlabnamespace>

Using the GitLab Runner in your workflow for CI-CD

In the CI-CD workflow file for your project (gitlab-ci.yaml) add the tags as below to use the gitlab runner created:

build-dotnet-seed:
  stage: build
  tags:
    - <runner-tag> #ex:abcrunner
docker-build-and-push:
  stage: push
  tags:
    - <runner-tag> #ex:abcrunner
  image: docker:19.03.12
  variables:
    DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2376
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: "/certs"
    DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY: 1
    DOCKER_CERT_PATH: "$DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR/client"
    TAG_NAME: latest
  services:
    - docker:19.03.13-dind

More info on configuring these values can be found here

References

GitLab Installation: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/

Types of GitLab Runner: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/#who-has-access-to-runners-in-the-gitlab-ui

Features of GitLab Runner: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/#features

Runner configuration: https://archives.docs.gitlab.com/14.8/ee/ci/docker/using_docker_build.html#use-docker-in-docker

Configuring Runner Volumes: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/executors/kubernetes.html#using-volumes