GitHub Actions Runner

This role will deploy/redeploy/uninstall and register/unregister local GitHub Actions Runner.

Requirements

• System must have access to the GitHub.

• The role require Personal Access Token to access the GitHub. The token has to be a value of PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN variable. Export the token to the local host environment. The token has to have admin rights for the repo.
  Personal Access Token for GitHub account can be created here.
  Note: Never store you personal access token in the GitHub repository. Use GitHub Secrets or some different secrets service.

• Runner user has to be pre-created.
  Recommended role: monolithprojects.user_management

• CentOS systems require EPEL repository.
  Recommended role: robertdebock.epel

• Weekly tested on:

  • CentOS/RHEL 7,8
  • Debian 9,10
  • Fedora 31,32
  • Ubuntu 16,18,20

  Note: Fedora 32 and Ubuntu 20 must use Ansible 2.9.8+. Other distros/releases will work also with older 2.8.0+ Ansible.

Role Variables

This is a copy from defaults/main.yml

# Runner user - user under which is the local runner service running
runner_user: "{{ lookup('env','USER') }}"

# Directory where the local runner will be installed
runner_dir: /opt/actions-runner

# Version of the GitHub Actions Runner
runner_version: "latest"

# If found, replace already registered runner
replace_runner: yes

# Do not show Ansible logs which may contain sensitive data (registration token)
hide_sensitive_logs: yes

# GitHub address
github_server: "https://github.com"

# Personal Access Token
access_token: "{{ lookup('env', 'PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN') }}"

# Account used for Runner registration (GitHub Repository user with admin rights or Organization owner)
# github_account: "youruser"

# Github repository name
# github_repo: "yourrepo"

Example Playbook

In this example the Ansible role will deploy (or redeploy) the GitHub Actions runner service (latest available version) and register the runner for the GitHub repo. Runner service will run under the same user as the Ansible is using for ssh connection (ansible).

---
- name: GitHub Actions Runner
  hosts: all
  user: ansible
  become: yes
  vars:
    - github_account: github-access-user
    - github_repo: my_awesome_repo
  roles:
    - role: monolithprojects.github_actions_runner

In this example the Ansible role will deploy (or redeploy) the GitHub Actions runner service (version 2.165.2) and register the runner for the GitHub repo. Runner service will run under the user runner-user.

---
- name: GitHub Actions Runner
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  vars:
    - runner_version: "2.165.2"
    - runner_user: runner-user
    - github_account: github-access-user
    - github_repo: my_awesome_repo
  roles:
    - role: monolithprojects.github_actions_runner

By using tag uninstall, GitHub Actions runner will be removed from the host and unregistered from the GitHub repository.

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --tags uninstall

License

MIT

Author Information

Created in 2020 by Michal Muransky