OpenShift Actions Runner Installer

The OpenShift Self-Hosted Actions Runner Installer is a GitHub Action to automatically install self-hosted Actions runner containers into a Kubernetes cluster.

The action uses the OpenShift Actions Runner Chart to install runners.

By default, the chart installs the OpenShift Actions Runner. The image to use is configurable (see Inputs).

This action uses these two projects to make the self-hosted runner installation on Kubernetes as easy as possible.

If a runner that uses the same image and has any requested labels is already present, the install step will be skipped. This action can be run as a prerequisite step to the "real" workflow to ensure the runner a workflow needs is available.

While this action, chart and images are developed for and tested on OpenShift, they do not contain any OpenShift specific code. This action should be compatible with any Kubernetes platform.

Prerequisites

You must have access to a Kubernetes cluster. Visit openshift.com/try or sign up for our Developer Sandbox.

You must have authenticated to your Kubernetes cluster and set up a Kubernetes config. If you are using OpenShift, you can use oc-login.

You must have helm v3 and either oc or kubectl installed. You can use the OpenShift CLI Installer to install and cache these tools.

You do not need cluster administrator privileges to deploy the runners and run workloads. However, some images or tools may require special permissions.

Example Workflows

Refer to the Repository Example and Organization Example. The Repository example is also an example of using a repository_dispatch event to trigger a separate workflow, once the runner is ready.

Remember to create a secret containing the GitHub PAT as detailed above, and pass it in the github_pat input. Below, the secret is named PAT.

All other inputs are optional.

Minimal Example

name: OpenShift Self-Hosted Installer Workflow
on: [ push, workflow_dispatch ]

jobs:
  install-runner:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    name: Install runner
    steps:
      - name: Install self hosted runner into this repository
        uses: redhat-actions/openshift-actions-runner-installer@v1
        with:
          github_pat: ${{ secrets.PAT }}

  self-hosted-workflow:
    # Now that the above job has ensured the runner container exists,
    # we can run our workflow inside it.
    name: OpenShift Self Hosted Workflow
    # Add other labels here if you have to filter by a runner type.
    runs-on: [ self-hosted ]
    needs: install-runner

    steps:
      - run: hostname
      - run: ls -Al
      # ... etc

Inputs

The only required input is the github_pat, which is a Personal Access Token, with the appropriate permisions.

The token must have the repo permission scope. For organization runners, the token must also have the admin:org scope. Refer to the Runner README.

Note that the default workflow token secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN does not have the permissions required to check for and install self-hosted runners. Refer to Permissions for the GITHUB_TOKEN.

Input Name	Description	Default
github_pat	GitHub Personal access token. Refer to the description above.	Must be provided
runner_image	Container image to use for the runner.	quay.io/redhat-github-actions/runner
runner_tag	Tag to use for the runner container image.	v1
runner_labels	Labels to add to the self-hosted runner. Must be comma-separated, spaces after commas optional.	None
runner_location	Repository or organization for the self-hosted runner.	Workflow repository
runner_replicas	Number of replicas of the container to create. Each replica is its own pod, and its own runner.	1
namespace	Optional Kubernetes namespace to pass to all Helm and Kube client comands.	None
helm_release_name	The Helm release name to use.	Runner location (repo or org)
helm_uninstall_existing	Uninstall any release that matches the helm_release_name and namespace before running helm install. If this is false, and the release exists, the action will fail when the helm install fails.	true
helm_chart_version	Version of our Helm Chart to install.	Latest release
helm_extra_args	Arbitrary arguments to append to the helm command. Refer to the Chart README. Separate items by newline. Do not quote the arguments, since @actions/exec manages quoting.	None

Outputs

Output Name	Description
helm_release_name	The name of the Helm release that was installed. If the runners were present and the install was skipped, this value is undefined.
installed	Boolean value indicating if the runners were installed (true), or already present (false).
runners	JSON-parsable array of the matching runners' names, whether they were installed by this action or already present.

Removing runners

helm uninstall is sufficient to remove the runners. As long as the runners terminate gracefully, they will remove themselves from the repository or organization before exiting.

You can use the helm_release_name output to determine the helm release name to uninstall.

Refer to the tear down example and the organization workflow for examples.

Troubleshooting

See the Troubleshooting sections of the chart README, and the runner README.

The most common errors are due to a missing or misconfigured GitHub PAT. Make sure that:

• The secret was created correctly.
• The secret is referred to by the correct name in the workflow file.
• The PAT in the secret has the correct permissions.