Tag: ubuntu

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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
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Setting user prompted values during apt-get install (e.g. tzdata)

Installing php-fpm on Ubuntu 22:04 prompts for some timezone values during install which makes it more difficult to install during a ‘docker build’ since passing -y to apt-get-install is not enough to respond to the prompts.

Here’s what I’m prompted for if I just run ‘apt-get install php-fpm’:

Configuring tzdata
------------------

Please select the geographic area in which you live. Subsequent configuration
questions will narrow this down by presenting a list of cities, representing
the time zones in which they are located.

  1. Africa   3. Antarctica  5. Arctic  7. Atlantic  9. Indian    11. US
  2. America  4. Australia   6. Asia    8. Europe    10. Pacific  12. Etc
Geographic area: 8

Please select the city or region corresponding to your time zone.

  1. Amsterdam    17. Guernsey     33. Monaco      49. Stockholm
  2. Andorra      18. Helsinki     34. Moscow      50. Tallinn
  3. Astrakhan    19. Isle_of_Man  35. Nicosia     51. Tirane
  4. Athens       20. Istanbul     36. Oslo        52. Tiraspol
  5. Belfast      21. Jersey       37. Paris       53. Ulyanovsk
  6. Belgrade     22. Kaliningrad  38. Podgorica   54. Uzhgorod
  7. Berlin       23. Kirov        39. Prague      55. Vaduz
  8. Bratislava   24. Kyiv         40. Riga        56. Vatican
  9. Brussels     25. Lisbon       41. Rome        57. Vienna
  10. Bucharest   26. Ljubljana    42. Samara      58. Vilnius
  11. Budapest    27. London       43. San_Marino  59. Volgograd
  12. Busingen    28. Luxembourg   44. Sarajevo    60. Warsaw
  13. Chisinau    29. Madrid       45. Saratov     61. Zagreb
  14. Copenhagen  30. Malta        46. Simferopol  62. Zaporozhye
  15. Dublin      31. Mariehamn    47. Skopje      63. Zurich
  16. Gibraltar   32. Minsk        48. Sofia
Time zone: 27


Current default time zone: 'Europe/London'
Local time is now:      Tue Sep 24 16:39:08 BST 2024.
Universal Time is now:  Tue Sep 24 15:39:08 UTC 2024.
Run 'dpkg-reconfigure tzdata' if you wish to change it.

From answers on this post, the easiest option (rather than setting values for the prompted values) is to run in non-interactive mode, and just default the tz to UTC, with:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive TZ=Etc/UTC apt-get install php-fpm

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Updating local versions of Docker images if using the latest tag

I have an ubuntu:latest image pulled locally from a couple of years ago, and it’s obviously not the latest since it’s over 2 years old. ‘docker images’ shows:

ubuntu                                                                           latest                     d5ca7a445605   2 years ago     65.6MB

If I run the image with -it and cat the /etc/lsb-release file, it shows it’s 20.04. Docker Hub is currently showing latest as 22.04.

To update it, if I ‘docker pull ubuntu:latest’ then it shows:

> docker pull ubuntu:latest
latest: Pulling from library/ubuntu
70104cd59e2a: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:1b8d8ff4777f36f19bfe73ee4df61e3a0b789caeff29caa019539ec7c9a57f95
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:latest
docker.io/library/ubuntu:latest

If I now start it and cat /etc/lsb-release, it shows 22.04. Done!

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