Uchechukwu Onyekwuluje's Knowledge & Brain Dumps

GitHub Actions Self Hosted Runner Setup

GitHub Actions is an API for cause and effect on GitHub. Orchestrate and automate any workflow, based on any event. With GitHub Actions, workflows and steps are just code in a repository, so you can create, share, reuse your software development practices.
A core component of this process is the use of runners. Runners/Agents etc. are essentially the work horses of most CICD systems and Github Actions is no exception. in this post, we will be focusing on installing and configuring self hosted runners.

Hardware Requirements

For the purpose of this post, setup or provision a VM with the following specs:

Package Requirements

Update the server and install base packages

sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install -y libncursesw5 libncursesw5-dev libncurses5 gcc-7 gcc dkms libaio1 \
libcanberra-gtk-module build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) libssl-dev openssl \
zip zlib1g-dev cmake zlib1g-dev libxi-dev libxtst-dev curl gnupg2 libgtk2.0-dev jq

Docker Installation
This is optional but gives you an added dimension for container builds

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88
sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Docker Machine Installation
This is optional but gives you an added dimension for extending functionality in other environments like building agents in AWS, Azure, Goofle, VMware, Virtualbox etc

curl -L https://github.com/docker/machine/releases/download/v0.16.2/docker-machine-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > /tmp/docker-machine
chmod +x /tmp/docker-machine
sudo mv /tmp/docker-machine /bin/docker-machine

Action Runner Setup

Prepare and install the runners

RUNNER_VERSION="2.279.0"
RUNNER_USER="ubuntu"

sudo mkdir /opt/actions-runner
sudo chown -R ${RUNNER_USER}:${RUNNER_USER} /opt/actions-runner
cd /opt/actions-runner

curl -O -sL https://github.com/actions/runner/releases/download/v${RUNNER_VERSION}/actions-runner-linux-x64-${RUNNER_VERSION}.tar.gz 
tar xzf actions-runner-linux-x64-${RUNNER_VERSION}.tar.gz
rm actions-runner-linux-x64-${RUNNER_VERSION}.tar.gz
chown -R ${RUNNER_USER}:${RUNNER_USER} /opt/actions-runner 
sudo /opt/actions-runner/bin/installdependencies.sh

Action Runner Registration for Organization

This section highlights how to register action runners against a given organization

export ORGANIZATION=<Organization Name>
export ACCESS_TOKEN=<PAT Personal Access Token>
export BUILD_LABELS=test

REGISTRATION_TOKEN=$(curl -sX POST -H "Authorization: token ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" https://api.github.com/orgs/${ORGANIZATION}/actions/runners/registration-token | jq .token --raw-output)
./config.sh --url https://github.com/${ORGANIZATION} --token ${REGISTRATION_TOKEN} --labels ${BUILD_LABELS} --name "runner" --work "_work"

Action Runner Registration for Repositories

This section highlights how to register action runners against a repository

export OWNER="<account name>"
export REPOSITORY="<repository>"
export ACCESS_TOKEN=<PAT Personal Access Token>
export BUILD_LABELS=test

REGISTRATION_TOKEN=$(curl -sX POST -H "Authorization: token ${ACCESS_TOKEN}" https://api.github.com/repos/${OWNER}/${REPOSITORY}/actions/runners/registration-token | jq .token --raw-output)

./config.sh --url https://github.com/${OWNER}/${REPOSITORY} --token ${REGISTRATION_TOKEN} --labels ${BUILD_LABELS} --name "runner" --work "_work"

Registration Output

if the registration process completes successfully, you should see this

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|        ____ _ _   _   _       _          _        _   _                      |
|       / ___(_) |_| | | |_   _| |__      / \   ___| |_(_) ___  _ __  ___      |
|      | |  _| | __| |_| | | | | '_ \    / _ \ / __| __| |/ _ \| '_ \/ __|     |
|      | |_| | | |_|  _  | |_| | |_) |  / ___ \ (__| |_| | (_) | | | \__ \     |
|       \____|_|\__|_| |_|\__,_|_.__/  /_/   \_\___|\__|_|\___/|_| |_|___/     |
|                                                                              |
|                       Self-hosted runner registration                        |
|                                                                              |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Authentication

√ Connected to GitHub
# Runner Registration

√ Runner successfully added
√ Runner connection is good

# Runner settings

√ Settings Saved.

Action Runner Service

If registration is successful, you can configure a service for your action runners. To do so, change directory to your installation path and run the following:

# Install service
sudo ./svc.sh install ${RUNNER_USER}

# Start Service
sudo ./svc.sh start

# Check Status
sudo ./svc.sh status

# Stop Service
sudo ./svc.sh stop

Remove Runner

To remove a given agent, loginto Github and check the commands from the console. It should be of the form:

./config.sh remove --token <runner token>