GitLab Runner for ARM

Tags

Notes:

• Alpine is the default image, when running docker pull klud/gitlab-runner this one is going to be downloaded depending on the runner arch, at the moment only arm is supported.

About the image

These image are built for ARM devices, based on the official repo of the GitLab Runner, both Alpine and Ubuntu flavors are available.

Overview

Runner container setup

You need to mount a config volume into our gitlab-runner container to be used for configs and other resources:

docker run -d --name arm-runner \
-v $(pwd)/.runner:/etc/gitlab-runner \
--restart=always \
klud/gitlab-runner

Or you can use a config container to mount your custom data volume:

docker run -d --name runner-config \
    -v /etc/gitlab-runner \
    armhf/busybox \
    /bin/true

docker run -d --name arm-runner --restart=always \
    --volumes-from runner-config \
    klud/gitlab-runner

If you plan on using the Docker executor, it is necessary to mount the Docker socket this way:

docker run -d --name arm-runner --restart=always \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v $(pwd)/.runner:/etc/gitlab-runner \
  klud/gitlab-runner

You can achieve this by using a docker-compose.yml file as well:

version: "2"
runner:
  image: klud/gitlab-runner
  container_name: arm-runner
  restart: always
  volumes:
    - $(pwd)/.runner:/etc/gitlab-runner
    - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

Register runner

Once the container is up and running, it is time to register the runner on the GitLab server

You can either do this:

docker exec -it arm-runner gitlab-runner register

Please enter the gitlab-ci coordinator URL (e.g. https://gitlab.com )
https://gitlab.domain.tld
Please enter the gitlab-ci token for this runner
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Please enter the gitlab-ci description for this runner
ARM Runner by ulm0
INFO[0034] fcf5c619 Registering runner... succeeded
Please enter the executor: shell, docker, docker-ssh, ssh?
docker
Please enter the Docker image (eg. ruby:2.1):
docker:17.12
INFO[0037] Runner registered successfully. Feel free to start it, but if it's
running already the config should be automatically reloaded!

Or this:

docker exec -it arm-runner \
gitlab-runner register -n \
--url https://gitlab.domain.tld \
--registration-token XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX \
--executor docker \
--description "ARM Runner by ulm0" \
--docker-image "docker:17.12" \
--tag-list "docker,arm" \
--docker-privileged

Troubleshooting

If you're using docker in docker in the runner, you may expirience some problems when talking to the docker socket

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon. Is the docker daemon running on this host?

In order to address this issue you need to look within the config folder you mounted in the runner container, there will be a config file inside, you need to add some lines and then restart the runner with docker restart arm-runner.

concurrent = 1
check_interval = 0

[[runners]]
  name = "ARM Runner by ulm0"
  url = "https://gitlab.domain.tld"
  token = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
  executor = "docker"
  [runners.docker]
    tls_verify = false
    image = "docker:17.12"
    ### IF YOU USED THE FIRST METHOD YOU NEED TO SET
    ### THE RUNNER IN PRIVILEGED MODE TO BE ABLE TO SPAWN JOBS
    privileged = true
    disable_cache = false
    ### YOU MAY NEED TO ADD THE CACHE DIR
    cache_dir = "cache"
    ### AND THE DOCKER SOCKET TO BE ABLE TO SPAWN JOBS AS WELL
    volumes = ["/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock","/cache"]
  [runners.cache]