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Setting up Self-Hosted GitHub Actions Runners

This document aims to collect information on setting up GitHub Actions runners for use with Rancher Desktop.

Windows

Prerequisites

The runner configuration we have tested is:

  • Windows 11 (including updates)
  • The machine needs at least 10G of memory

Configuration

Some steps must be run as administrator (and others done as the unprivileged account that will be used to run tasks); they will be labeled as follows:

Icon Context
👶 Unprivileged user
🧙 Administrator

  1. 🧙 Set up the unprivileged user. A password is required.

  2. 🧙 Install Microsoft Visual Studio.

  3. 👶 Manually create ~/.npmrc (note that the second line is long and may be wrapped for display):

    msvs_version=2022
msbuild_path=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe

  4. 👶 Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

  5. 👶 Install Scoop

  6. 👶 Install git, unzip, python

    • scoop install git unzip python
    • actions/setup-python requires admin so we're using Scoop-installed Python instead.

  7. 🧙 Manually install WSL

    • wsl --install --inbox --enable-wsl1 --no-distribution
    • The Microsoft Store version of WSL must not be installed.
      • Check with Get-AppPackage -Name *Linux* (for both accounts)
      • If found, uninstall with Get-AppPackage -Name *Linux* | Remove-AppPackage

  8. 🧙 Reboot the machine to finish WSL installation.

  9. 🧙 Install GitHub Actions runner following instructions (on the page to add a runner, not the help documentation).

    • The default runner group, labels, work folder, etc. are fine.
    • Install the runner as a service.
    • Run the service as the standard user 👶 created above.

    Sample output:

    Would you like to run the runner as service? (Y/N) [press Enter for N] y
User account to use for the service [press Enter for NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE] Joe
Password for the account MACHINE-NAME\Joe *********
Granting file permissions to 'MACHINE-NAME\Joe'.
Service actions.runner.… successfully installed
Service actions.runner.… successfully set recovery option
Service actions.runner.… successfully set to delayed auto start
Service actions.runner.… successfully configured

Linux

Prerequisites

  • A host machine with qemu-system-x86_64 (ideally with working KVM acceleration).
  • A minimum of 6GB of RAM per ephemeral worker (plus overhead).

Configuration

  1. Build the image found in /src/disk-images/github-runner-linux, or download the image built via GitHub Actions.
  2. Build /src/go/github-runner-monitor, or download the executable built via GitHub Actions. See that directory for details.
  3. Generate a GitHub access token (fine-grained), scoped to only the repository, with Administration write permissions.
  4. Set up a systemd unit or similar, possibly based on: 
    [Unit]
Description=GitHub Runner Monitor
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
TimeoutStopSec=5min
Environment="GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=ghp_000000000000000000"
# Environment="RUNNER_COUNT=12345"
# Environment="CPUS=12345"
# Environment="MEMORY=12345"
# Environment="DISK=/path/to/image"
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/github-runner-monitor

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Current configuration

Based on the size of the host we're using, we're currently using 4 runners with 3 vCPUs and 6 GB of RAM. They have the labels self-hosted, Linux, X64, and ephemeral.