Setup GitLab runner on AWS-ec2

In this article, we are gonna set up a GitLab runner on the amazon ec2 instance.

What is GitLab?

Gitlab is a simple, understanding, and efficient platform for DevOps platform. There are six core values of GitLab 🤝 Collaboration, 📈 Results, ⏱️ Efficiency, 🌐 Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging.

What are Gitlab runners? 🤔

GitLab runner is like a kitchen 🍳 in our home, We use it to cook something. In DevOps, it’s called an agent/Slave. It’s basically an agent that runs your CI/CD that comes from GitLab. When we set up a runner that creates a communication between your GitLab and the machine where GitLab Runner is installed.

For example⬇️,

1 . We need to build a container and push it to a repository.

2. Run an npm build and copy the build folder to a remote location.

3. Perform some remote execution using ssh.

Let’s start setting up the GitLab runner👷,

Here, We are going to use a Ubuntu ec2 instance .

Step 1: Add the repository of Gitlab-runner.

curl -L "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.rpm.sh" | sudo bash

This will add an official GitLab repository.

Step 2: Install GitLab Runner on ubuntu

The below commands to install the latest GitLab runner.⬇️

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install gitlab-runner

Step 3: Check if it’s installed correctly or not.

sudo gitlab-runner -version

After running the above command you can view the output shown below.

Version:      14.8.2
Git revision: c6e7e194
Git branch:   14-8-stable
GO version:   go1.17.7
Built:        2022-03-01T17:18:25+0000
OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

Note📝: This may differ in your case

To check the Gitlab runner status

sudo gitlab-runner status

Output:

Runtime platform  
arch=amd64 os=linux pid=284992 revision=c6e7e194 version=14.8.2
gitlab-runner: Service is running

Step 4: Register a Gitlab Runner to Gitlab on Ubuntu

1. Login to the GitLab account. Go to the project and its setting.

Gitlab ➡️Login ➡️project ➡️ Settings ➡️ CI/CD ➡️ runners

CI/CD

👀 Expand the runner tab and you’ll see two things: the URL and the
registration token. 👀

Keep a copy of them as we are going to use them to register the runner.

Note: You should disable the Public runner so all the jobs tents towards the private runner. i.e Ubuntu.

Now, Let’s register it.

sudo gitlab-runner register

Use the above command to start the registration process.

You’ll be prompted for 6 inputs.

1. Enter the GitLab instance URL: https://gitlab.com/
2. Enter the registration token: We copied it from the project setting above. These are private and Do not share with anyone.
3. Enter a description for the runner: Your choice
4. Enter tags for the runner (comma-separated):

These tags are most important as we are gonna use them in the pipelines to uniquely identify the runner

5. Enter an optional maintenance note for the runner: Your choice

6. Enter an executor:

Note: the executor might change use-case to use-case. For example

A. We need a docker container and perform an action on that, In this case, we use “docker” as executor.

B. We need to shell, In this case, we use “shell” as executor.

Step 5: Let’s start the GitLab-runner.

sudo gitlab-runner start

Step 6: Check in the Gitlab console

⭐ You can see the available runner in GitLab

We have successfully installed and registered the GitLab runner on the Ubuntu ec2 instance.

Thanks for reading!