I just installed and configured a GitLab Runner on a separate Ubuntu 22.04 server. Following tips here and here, I’ve started the runner with ‘sudo gitlab-runner start’ and I’ve verified the config with ‘sudo gitlab-runner verify’, but the GitLab server is still showing the ‘never contacted this instance’ error:
Following the troubleshooting steps here, I used journalctl to view the logs:
sudo journalctl --unit=gitlab-runner.service -n 100 --no-pager
and this gave me a clue:
Oct 19 14:36:24 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server systemd[1]: Started GitLab Runner.
Oct 19 14:36:25 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1264]: FATAL: failed to get user home dir: $HOME is not defined
Oct 19 14:36:25 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server systemd[1]: gitlab-runner.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 19 14:36:25 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server systemd[1]: gitlab-runner.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
To set a home dir for the gitlab-runner user, I checked /etc/passwd, found the line for gitlab-runner and it has an entry towards the end of the line for /home/gitlab-runner, so that seems ok.
Following tips here, I edited the service config with:
sudo systemctl edit gitlab-runner
which edits
/etc/systemd/system/gitlab-runner.service.d/override.conf and added this section:
[Service]
Environment="HOME=/home/gitlab-runner"
Restarted the service with:
sudo systemctl restart gitlab-runner
checked the logs again with jornalctl and now we’re up and running, and the runner is reported as available on the Runners page. Done!
Oct 19 14:51:48 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1400]: Runtime platform arch=amd64 os=linux pid=1400 revision=66a723c3 version=17.5.0
Oct 19 14:51:48 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1400]: Starting multi-runner from /etc/gitlab-runner/config.toml... builds=0 max_builds=0
Oct 19 14:51:48 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1400]: Running in system-mode.
Oct 19 14:51:48 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1400]:
Oct 19 14:51:48 proxmox-ubuntu2204-server gitlab-runner[1400]: Configuration loaded builds=0 max_builds=1