Deploying a container to Google Cloud Run via gcloud cli

If you don’t already have one, create an Artifact Registry:

gcloud artifacts repositories create your-repo-name \
--repository-format=docker \
--location=europe-west2 \
--description="your-repo-description" \
--immutable-tags \
--async

Authorize gcloud cli access to the registry in your region:

gcloud auth configure-docker europe-west2-docker.pkg.dev

This adds config to $HOME/.docker/config.json, you can look in this file to see what GCP registries you have already authenticate with.

The image you’re deploying needs to listen on port 8080, and needs to be built for linux/amd64. If you’re building on an Apple Silicon Mac, build your image with:

docker build . --platform linux/amd64 -t image-tag-name 

Tag the image ready to push to your registry:

docker tag SOURCE-IMAGE LOCATION-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT-ID/REPOSITORY/IMAGE:TAG

where:

LOCATION = GCP region, e.g. europe-west2

Authenticate your local Docker with your GCP Artifact Repository:

gcloud auth configure-docker LOCATION-docker.pkg.dev

Push your image to the Artifact Repository with:

docker push LOCAITION-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT-ID/REPOSITORY/IMAGE:TAG

After pushing you can browse your Artifact Registry in the Console and see your image there.

To deploy a new service using the image you just pushed:

gcloud run deploy gcp-nginx-test --project your-project-name --image LOCAITION-docker.pkg.dev/PROJECT-ID/REPOSITORY/IMAGE:TAG

These steps are a summary of the Artifact Registry docs here, and the Cloud Run docs here.

GitLab Runner “Runner has never contacted this instance”

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

GitLab Runner unable to run Docker commands

I have a GitLab Runner using a Shell Executor that needs to build a Docker container. When it executes the first Docker command it gets this error:

docker.errors.DockerException: Error while fetching server API version: ('Connection aborted.', PermissionError(13, 'Permission denied'))

If I logon as the gitlab-runnner user and try to execute docker commands manually I get this error:

$ docker ps
permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Get "http://%2Fvar%2Frun%2Fdocker.sock/v1.47/containers/json": dial unix /var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied

A quick Google and I need to add the gitlab-runner to the Docker group to grant it permission to execute Docker:

sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER

GitLab – no runners for project

Setting up a new self-hosted GitLab, the pipeline for my project is stuck with this error:

… which looks like there are no runners available for the project. I know I have a runner available because I set one up yesterday, so taking a closer look.

In the CI/CD settings for my project, I think I see my shared runner:

Looking in the admin settings, it looks like when I set it up I used the tag ‘shared’:

The error says ‘no runners match all of the job’s tags: docker-test’, so I think what I need to do is change the tags on my runner to match. I edited the tags to remove ‘shared’ and replaced with ‘docker-test’ and now the job starts running! On to the next errors!