33 KiB
stage | group | info |
---|---|---|
Verify | Runner | To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments |
Configuring runners (FREE)
If you have installed your own runners, you can configure and secure them in GitLab.
If you need to configure runners on the machine where you installed GitLab Runner, see the GitLab Runner documentation.
Manually clear the runner cache
Read clearing the cache.
Set maximum job timeout for a runner
For each runner, you can specify a maximum job timeout. This timeout, if smaller than the project defined timeout, takes precedence.
This feature can be used to prevent your shared runner from being overwhelmed by a project that has jobs with a long timeout (for example, one week).
On GitLab.com, you cannot override the job timeout for shared runners and must use the project defined timeout.
To set the maximum job timeout:
- In a project, go to Settings > CI/CD > Runners.
- Select your specific runner to edit the settings.
- Enter a value under Maximum job timeout. Must be 10 minutes or more. If not defined, the project's job timeout setting is used.
- Select Save changes.
How this feature works:
Example 1 - Runner timeout bigger than project timeout
- You set the maximum job timeout for a runner to 24 hours
- You set the CI/CD Timeout for a project to 2 hours
- You start a job
- The job, if running longer, times out after 2 hours
Example 2 - Runner timeout not configured
- You remove the maximum job timeout configuration from a runner
- You set the CI/CD Timeout for a project to 2 hours
- You start a job
- The job, if running longer, times out after 2 hours
Example 3 - Runner timeout smaller than project timeout
- You set the maximum job timeout for a runner to 30 minutes
- You set the CI/CD Timeout for a project to 2 hours
- You start a job
- The job, if running longer, times out after 30 minutes
Be careful with sensitive information
With some runner executors, if you can run a job on the runner, you can get full access to the file system, and thus any code it runs as well as the token of the runner. With shared runners, this means that anyone that runs jobs on the runner, can access anyone else's code that runs on the runner.
In addition, because you can get access to the runner token, it is possible to create a clone of a runner and submit false jobs, for example.
The above is easily avoided by restricting the usage of shared runners on large public GitLab instances, controlling access to your GitLab instance, and using more secure runner executors.
Prevent runners from revealing sensitive information
Introduced in GitLab 10.0.
You can protect runners so they don't reveal sensitive information. When a runner is protected, the runner picks jobs created on protected branches or protected tags only, and ignores other jobs.
To protect or unprotect a runner:
- Go to the project's Settings > CI/CD and expand the Runners section.
- Find the runner you want to protect or unprotect. Make sure it's enabled.
- Select the pencil button.
- Check the Protected option.
- Select Save changes.
Forks
Whenever a project is forked, it copies the settings of the jobs that relate to it. This means that if you have shared runners set up for a project and someone forks that project, the shared runners serve jobs of this project.
Attack vectors in runners
Mentioned briefly earlier, but the following things of runners can be exploited. We're always looking for contributions that can mitigate these Security Considerations.
Reset the runner registration token for a project
If you think that a registration token for a project was revealed, you should reset it. A registration token can be used to register another runner for the project. That new runner may then be used to obtain the values of secret variables or to clone project code.
To reset the registration token:
- Go to the project's Settings > CI/CD.
- Expand the General pipelines settings section.
- Find the Runner token form field and select Reveal value.
- Delete the value and save the form.
- After the page is refreshed, expand the Runners settings section and check the registration token - it should be changed.
From now on the old token is no longer valid and does not register any new runners to the project. If you are using any tools to provision and register new runners, the tokens used in those tools should be updated to reflect the value of the new token.
Reset the runner authentication token
If you think that an authentication token for a runner was revealed, you should reset it. An attacker could use the token to clone a runner.
To reset the authentication token, unregister the runner and then register it again.
To verify that the previous authentication token has been revoked, use the Runners API.
Determine the IP address of a runner
Introduced in GitLab 10.6.
It may be useful to know the IP address of a runner so you can troubleshoot issues with that runner. GitLab stores and displays the IP address by viewing the source of the HTTP requests it makes to GitLab when polling for jobs. The IP address is always kept up to date so if the runner IP changes it automatically updates in GitLab.
The IP address for shared runners and specific runners can be found in different places.
Determine the IP address of a shared runner
To view the IP address of a shared runner you must have administrator access to the GitLab instance. To determine this:
- On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
- On the left sidebar, select Overview > Runners.
- Find the runner in the table and view the IP Address column.
Determine the IP address of a specific runner
To can find the IP address of a runner for a specific project, you must have the Owner role for the project.
- Go to the project's Settings > CI/CD and expand the Runners section.
- On the details page you should see a row for IP Address.
Use tags to control which jobs a runner can run
You must set up a runner to be able to run all the different types of jobs that it may encounter on the projects it's shared over. This would be problematic for large amounts of projects, if it weren't for tags.
GitLab CI/CD tags are not the same as Git tags. GitLab CI/CD tags are associated with runners. Git tags are associated with commits.
By tagging a runner for the types of jobs it can handle, you can make sure shared runners will only run the jobs they are equipped to run.
For instance, at GitLab we have runners tagged with rails
if they contain
the appropriate dependencies to run Rails test suites.
Set a runner to run untagged jobs
When you register a runner, its default behavior is to only pick tagged jobs. To change this, you must have the Owner role for the project.
To make a runner pick untagged jobs:
- Go to the project's Settings > CI/CD and expand the Runners section.
- Find the runner you want to pick untagged jobs and make sure it's enabled.
- Select the pencil button.
- Check the Run untagged jobs option.
- Select Save changes for the changes to take effect.
NOTE: The runner tags list can not be empty when it's not allowed to pick untagged jobs.
Below are some example scenarios of different variations.
Runner runs only tagged jobs
The following examples illustrate the potential impact of the runner being set to run only tagged jobs.
Example 1:
- The runner is configured to run only tagged jobs and has the
docker
tag. - A job that has a
hello
tag is executed and stuck.
Example 2:
- The runner is configured to run only tagged jobs and has the
docker
tag. - A job that has a
docker
tag is executed and run.
Example 3:
- The runner is configured to run only tagged jobs and has the
docker
tag. - A job that has no tags defined is executed and stuck.
Runner is allowed to run untagged jobs
The following examples illustrate the potential impact of the runner being set to run tagged and untagged jobs.
Example 1:
- The runner is configured to run untagged jobs and has the
docker
tag. - A job that has no tags defined is executed and run.
- A second job that has a
docker
tag defined is executed and run.
Example 2:
- The runner is configured to run untagged jobs and has no tags defined.
- A job that has no tags defined is executed and run.
- A second job that has a
docker
tag defined is stuck.
Use tags to run jobs on different platforms
You can use tags to run different jobs on different platforms. For
example, if you have an OS X runner with tag osx
and a Windows runner with tag
windows
, you can run a job on each platform:
windows job:
stage:
- build
tags:
- windows
script:
- echo Hello, %USERNAME%!
osx job:
stage:
- build
tags:
- osx
script:
- echo "Hello, $USER!"
Use CI/CD variables in tags
Introduced in GitLab 14.1.
You can use CI/CD variables with tags
for dynamic runner selection:
variables:
KUBERNETES_RUNNER: kubernetes
job:
tags:
- docker
- $KUBERNETES_RUNNER
script:
- echo "Hello runner selector feature"
Runner statuses
A runner can have one of the following statuses.
Status | Description |
---|---|
online | The runner has contacted GitLab within the last 2 hours and is available to run jobs. |
offline | The runner has not contacted GitLab in more than 2 hours and is not available to run jobs. Check the runner to see if you can bring it online. |
stale | The runner has not contacted GitLab in more than 3 months. If the runner was created more than 3 months ago, but it never contacted the instance, it is also considered stale. |
never_contacted | The runner has never contacted GitLab. To make the runner contact GitLab, run gitlab-runner run . |
Configure runner behavior with variables
You can use CI/CD variables to configure runner Git behavior globally or for individual jobs:
GIT_STRATEGY
GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY
GIT_CHECKOUT
GIT_CLEAN_FLAGS
GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS
GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
GIT_DEPTH
(shallow cloning)GIT_CLONE_PATH
(custom build directories)TRANSFER_METER_FREQUENCY
(artifact/cache meter update frequency)ARTIFACT_COMPRESSION_LEVEL
(artifact archiver compression level)CACHE_COMPRESSION_LEVEL
(cache archiver compression level)CACHE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT
(cache request timeout)
You can also use variables to configure how many times a runner attempts certain stages of job execution.
When using the Kubernetes executor, you can use variables to override Kubernetes CPU and memory allocations for requests and limits.
Git strategy
- Introduced in GitLab 8.9 as an experimental feature.
GIT_STRATEGY=none
requires GitLab Runner v1.7+.
You can set the GIT_STRATEGY
used to fetch the repository content, either
globally or per-job in the variables
section:
variables:
GIT_STRATEGY: clone
There are three possible values: clone
, fetch
, and none
. If left unspecified,
jobs use the project's pipeline setting.
clone
is the slowest option. It clones the repository from scratch for every
job, ensuring that the local working copy is always pristine.
If an existing worktree is found, it is removed before cloning.
fetch
is faster as it re-uses the local working copy (falling back to clone
if it does not exist). git clean
is used to undo any changes made by the last
job, and git fetch
is used to retrieve commits made after the last job ran.
However, fetch
does require access to the previous worktree. This works
well when using the shell
or docker
executor because these
try to preserve worktrees and try to re-use them by default.
This has limitations when using the Docker Machine executor.
A Git strategy of none
also re-uses the local working copy, but skips all Git
operations normally done by GitLab. GitLab Runner pre-clone scripts are also skipped,
if present. This strategy could mean you need to add fetch
and checkout
commands
to your .gitlab-ci.yml
script.
It can be used for jobs that operate exclusively on artifacts, like a deployment job. Git repository data may be present, but it's likely out of date. You should only rely on files brought into the local working copy from cache or artifacts.
Git submodule strategy
Requires GitLab Runner v1.10+.
The GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY
variable is used to control if / how Git
submodules are included when fetching the code before a build. You can set them
globally or per-job in the variables
section.
There are three possible values: none
, normal
, and recursive
:
-
none
means that submodules are not included when fetching the project code. This is the default, which matches the pre-v1.10 behavior. -
normal
means that only the top-level submodules are included. It's equivalent to:git submodule sync git submodule update --init
-
recursive
means that all submodules (including submodules of submodules) are included. This feature needs Git v1.8.1 and later. When using a GitLab Runner with an executor not based on Docker, make sure the Git version meets that requirement. It's equivalent to:git submodule sync --recursive git submodule update --init --recursive
For this feature to work correctly, the submodules must be configured
(in .gitmodules
) with either:
- the HTTP(S) URL of a publicly-accessible repository, or
- a relative path to another repository on the same GitLab server. See the Git submodules documentation.
You can provide additional flags to control advanced behavior using GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
.
Git checkout
Introduced in GitLab Runner 9.3.
The GIT_CHECKOUT
variable can be used when the GIT_STRATEGY
is set to either
clone
or fetch
to specify whether a git checkout
should be run. If not
specified, it defaults to true. You can set them globally or per-job in the
variables
section.
If set to false
, the runner:
- when doing
fetch
- updates the repository and leaves the working copy on the current revision, - when doing
clone
- clones the repository and leaves the working copy on the default branch.
If GIT_CHECKOUT
is set to true
, both clone
and fetch
work the same way.
The runner checks out the working copy of a revision related
to the CI pipeline:
variables:
GIT_STRATEGY: clone
GIT_CHECKOUT: "false"
script:
- git checkout -B master origin/master
- git merge $CI_COMMIT_SHA
Git clean flags
Introduced in GitLab Runner 11.10
The GIT_CLEAN_FLAGS
variable is used to control the default behavior of
git clean
after checking out the sources. You can set it globally or per-job in the
variables
section.
GIT_CLEAN_FLAGS
accepts all possible options of the git clean
command.
git clean
is disabled if GIT_CHECKOUT: "false"
is specified.
If GIT_CLEAN_FLAGS
is:
- Not specified,
git clean
flags default to-ffdx
. - Given the value
none
,git clean
is not executed.
For example:
variables:
GIT_CLEAN_FLAGS: -ffdx -e cache/
script:
- ls -al cache/
Git fetch extra flags
Introduced in GitLab Runner 13.1.
Use the GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS
variable to control the behavior of
git fetch
. You can set it globally or per-job in the variables
section.
GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS
accepts all options of the git fetch
command. However, GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS
flags are appended after the default flags that can't be modified.
The default flags are:
If GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS
is:
- Not specified,
git fetch
flags default to--prune --quiet
along with the default flags. - Given the value
none
,git fetch
is executed only with the default flags.
For example, the default flags are --prune --quiet
, so you can make git fetch
more verbose by overriding this with just --prune
:
variables:
GIT_FETCH_EXTRA_FLAGS: --prune
script:
- ls -al cache/
The configuration above results in git fetch
being called this way:
git fetch origin $REFSPECS --depth 50 --prune
Where $REFSPECS
is a value provided to the runner internally by GitLab.
Git submodule update flags
Introduced in GitLab Runner 14.8.
Use the GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
variable to control the behavior of git submodule update
when GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY
is set to either normal
or recursive
.
You can set it globally or per-job in the variables
section.
GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
accepts all options of the
git submodule update
subcommand. However, note that GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
flags are appended after a few default flags:
--init
, ifGIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY
was set tonormal
orrecursive
.--recursive
, ifGIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY
was set torecursive
.GIT_DEPTH
. See the default value below.
Git honors the last occurrence of a flag in the list of arguments, so manually
providing them in GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS
will also override these default flags.
You can use this variable to fetch the latest remote HEAD
instead of the commit tracked,
in the repository, or to speed up the checkout by fetching submodules in multiple parallel jobs:
variables:
GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY: recursive
GIT_SUBMODULE_UPDATE_FLAGS: --remote --jobs 4
script:
- ls -al .git/modules/
The configuration above results in git submodule update
being called this way:
git submodule update --init --depth 50 --recursive --remote --jobs 4
WARNING:
You should be aware of the implications for the security, stability, and reproducibility of
your builds when using the --remote
flag. In most cases, it is better to explicitly track
submodule commits as designed, and update them using an auto-remediation/dependency bot.
Shallow cloning
Introduced in GitLab 8.9 as an experimental feature.
You can specify the depth of fetching and cloning using GIT_DEPTH
.
GIT_DEPTH
does a shallow clone of the repository and can significantly speed up cloning.
It can be helpful for repositories with a large number of commits or old, large binaries. The value is
passed to git fetch
and git clone
.
In GitLab 12.0 and later, newly-created projects automatically have a
default git depth
value of 50
.
If you use a depth of 1
and have a queue of jobs or retry
jobs, jobs may fail.
Git fetching and cloning is based on a ref, such as a branch name, so runners
can't clone a specific commit SHA. If multiple jobs are in the queue, or
you're retrying an old job, the commit to be tested must be within the
Git history that is cloned. Setting too small a value for GIT_DEPTH
can make
it impossible to run these old commits and unresolved reference
is displayed in
job logs. You should then reconsider changing GIT_DEPTH
to a higher value.
Jobs that rely on git describe
may not work correctly when GIT_DEPTH
is
set since only part of the Git history is present.
To fetch or clone only the last 3 commits:
variables:
GIT_DEPTH: "3"
You can set it globally or per-job in the variables
section.
Custom build directories
Introduced in GitLab Runner 11.10.
By default, GitLab Runner clones the repository in a unique subpath of the
$CI_BUILDS_DIR
directory. However, your project might require the code in a
specific directory (Go projects, for example). In that case, you can specify
the GIT_CLONE_PATH
variable to tell the runner the directory to clone the
repository in:
variables:
GIT_CLONE_PATH: $CI_BUILDS_DIR/project-name
test:
script:
- pwd
The GIT_CLONE_PATH
has to always be within $CI_BUILDS_DIR
. The directory set in $CI_BUILDS_DIR
is dependent on executor and configuration of runners.builds_dir
setting.
This can only be used when custom_build_dir
is enabled in the
runner's configuration.
This is the default configuration for the docker
and kubernetes
executors.
Handling concurrency
An executor that uses a concurrency greater than 1
might lead
to failures. Multiple jobs might be working on the same directory if the builds_dir
is shared between jobs.
The runner does not try to prevent this situation. It's up to the administrator and developers to comply with the requirements of runner configuration.
To avoid this scenario, you can use a unique path within $CI_BUILDS_DIR
, because runner
exposes two additional variables that provide a unique ID
of concurrency:
$CI_CONCURRENT_ID
: Unique ID for all jobs running within the given executor.$CI_CONCURRENT_PROJECT_ID
: Unique ID for all jobs running within the given executor and project.
The most stable configuration that should work well in any scenario and on any executor
is to use $CI_CONCURRENT_ID
in the GIT_CLONE_PATH
. For example:
variables:
GIT_CLONE_PATH: $CI_BUILDS_DIR/$CI_CONCURRENT_ID/project-name
test:
script:
- pwd
The $CI_CONCURRENT_PROJECT_ID
should be used in conjunction with $CI_PROJECT_PATH
as the $CI_PROJECT_PATH
provides a path of a repository. That is, group/subgroup/project
. For example:
variables:
GIT_CLONE_PATH: $CI_BUILDS_DIR/$CI_CONCURRENT_ID/$CI_PROJECT_PATH
test:
script:
- pwd
Nested paths
The value of GIT_CLONE_PATH
is expanded once and nesting variables
within is not supported.
For example, you define both the variables below in your
.gitlab-ci.yml
file:
variables:
GOPATH: $CI_BUILDS_DIR/go
GIT_CLONE_PATH: $GOPATH/src/namespace/project
The value of GIT_CLONE_PATH
is expanded once into
$CI_BUILDS_DIR/go/src/namespace/project
, and results in failure
because $CI_BUILDS_DIR
is not expanded.
Job stages attempts
Introduced in GitLab, it requires GitLab Runner v1.9+.
You can set the number of attempts that the running job tries to execute the following stages:
Variable | Description |
---|---|
ARTIFACT_DOWNLOAD_ATTEMPTS |
Number of attempts to download artifacts running a job |
EXECUTOR_JOB_SECTION_ATTEMPTS |
In GitLab 12.10 and later, the number of attempts to run a section in a job after a No Such Container error (Docker executor only). |
GET_SOURCES_ATTEMPTS |
Number of attempts to fetch sources running a job |
RESTORE_CACHE_ATTEMPTS |
Number of attempts to restore the cache running a job |
The default is one single attempt.
Example:
variables:
GET_SOURCES_ATTEMPTS: 3
You can set them globally or per-job in the variables
section.
System calls not available on GitLab.com shared runners
GitLab.com shared runners run on CoreOS. This means that you cannot use some system calls, like getlogin
, from the C standard library.
Artifact and cache settings
Introduced in GitLab Runner 13.9.
Artifact and cache settings control the compression ratio of artifacts and caches. Use these settings to specify the size of the archive produced by a job.
- On a slow network, uploads might be faster for smaller archives.
- On a fast network where bandwidth and storage are not a concern, uploads might be faster using the fastest compression ratio, despite the archive produced being larger.
For GitLab Pages to serve
HTTP Range requests, artifacts
should use the ARTIFACT_COMPRESSION_LEVEL: fastest
setting, as only uncompressed zip archives
support this feature.
A meter can be enabled to provide the rate of transfer for uploads and downloads.
You can set a maximum time for cache upload and download with the CACHE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT
setting.
This setting can be useful when slow cache uploads substantially increase the duration of your job.
variables:
# output upload and download progress every 2 seconds
TRANSFER_METER_FREQUENCY: "2s"
# Use fast compression for artifacts, resulting in larger archives
ARTIFACT_COMPRESSION_LEVEL: "fast"
# Use no compression for caches
CACHE_COMPRESSION_LEVEL: "fastest"
# Set maximum duration of cache upload and download
CACHE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT: 5
Variable | Description |
---|---|
TRANSFER_METER_FREQUENCY |
Specify how often to print the meter's transfer rate. It can be set to a duration (for example, 1s or 1m30s ). A duration of 0 disables the meter (default). When a value is set, the pipeline shows a progress meter for artifact and cache uploads and downloads. |
ARTIFACT_COMPRESSION_LEVEL |
To adjust compression ratio, set to fastest , fast , default , slow , or slowest . This setting works with the Fastzip archiver only, so the GitLab Runner feature flag FF_USE_FASTZIP must also be enabled. |
CACHE_COMPRESSION_LEVEL |
To adjust compression ratio, set to fastest , fast , default , slow , or slowest . This setting works with the Fastzip archiver only, so the GitLab Runner feature flag FF_USE_FASTZIP must also be enabled. |
CACHE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT |
Configure the maximum duration of cache upload and download operations for a single job in minutes. Default is 10 minutes. |
Staging directory
Introduced in GitLab Runner 15.0.
If you do not want to archive cache and artifacts in the system's default temporary directory, you can specify a different directory.
You might need to change the directory if your system's default temporary path has constraints. If you use a fast disk for the directory location, it can also improve performance.
To change the directory, set ARCHIVER_STAGING_DIR
as a variable in your CI job, or use a runner variable when you register the runner (gitlab register --env ARCHIVER_STAGING_DIR=<dir>
).
The directory you specify is used as the location for downloading artifacts prior to extraction. If the fastzip
archiver is
used, this location is also used as scratch space when archiving.
Configure fastzip
to improve performance
Introduced in GitLab Runner 15.0.
To tune fastzip
, ensure the FF_USE_FASTZIP
flag is enabled.
Then use any of the following environment variables.
Variable | Description |
---|---|
FASTZIP_ARCHIVER_CONCURRENCY |
The number of files to be concurrently compressed. Default is the number of CPUs available. |
FASTZIP_ARCHIVER_BUFFER_SIZE |
The buffer size allocated per concurrency for each file. Data exceeding this number moves to scratch space. Default is 2 MiB. |
FASTZIP_EXTRACTOR_CONCURRENCY |
The number of files to be concurrency decompressed. Default is the number of CPUs available. |
Files in a zip archive are appended sequentially. This makes concurrent compression challenging. fastzip
works around
this limitation by compressing files concurrently to disk first, and then copying the result back to zip archive
sequentially.
To avoid writing to disk and reading the contents back for smaller files, a small buffer per concurrency is used. This setting
can be controlled with FASTZIP_ARCHIVER_BUFFER_SIZE
. The default size for this buffer is 2 MiB, therefore, a
concurrency of 16 will allocate 32 MiB. Data that exceeds the buffer size will be written to and read back from disk.
Therefore, using no buffer, FASTZIP_ARCHIVER_BUFFER_SIZE: 0
, and only scratch space is a valid option.
FASTZIP_ARCHIVER_CONCURRENCY
controls how many files are compressed concurrency. As mentioned above, this setting
therefore can increase how much memory is being used, but also how much temporary data is written to the scratch space.
The default is the number of CPUs available, but given the memory ramifications, this may not always be the best
setting.
FASTZIP_EXTRACTOR_CONCURRENCY
controls how many files are decompressed at once. Files from a zip archive can natively
be read from concurrency, so no additional memory is allocated in additional to what the decompressor requires. This
defaults to the number of CPUs available.
Clean up stale runners (ULTIMATE)
Introduced in GitLab 15.1.
You can clean up group runners that have been inactive for more than three months.
Group runners are those that were created at the group level.
- On the top bar, select Menu > Groups and find your group.
- On the left sidebar, select Settings > CI/CD.
- Expand Runners.
- Turn on the Enable stale runner cleanup toggle.
View stale runner cleanup logs
You can check the Sidekiq logs to see the cleanup result. In Kibana you can use the following query:
{
"query": {
"match_phrase": {
"json.class.keyword": "Ci::Runners::StaleGroupRunnersPruneCronWorker"
}
}
}
Filter entries where stale runners were removed:
{
"query": {
"range": {
"json.extra.ci_runners_stale_group_runners_prune_cron_worker.total_pruned": {
"gte": 1,
"lt": null
}
}
}
}