Files
act_runner/examples/vm/rootless-docker.md
bircni 8700adc933 feat: config command to edit config files (#1140)
Changing a setting after `generate-config` meant hand-editing YAML, which is awkward in provisioning scripts. `config` now edits an existing file in place:

```bash
./gitea-runner -c config.yaml config set runner.capacity 4
./gitea-runner -c config.yaml config set runner.envs.MY_VAR value
./gitea-runner -c config.yaml config add runner.labels 'ubuntu:docker://node:22'
./gitea-runner -c config.yaml config remove runner.labels 'ubuntu:docker://node:22'
./gitea-runner -c config.yaml config get runner.labels
```

Edits go through the YAML node tree, so comments, key order and the blank lines between top-level sections survive — a test asserts that appending a label to `config.example.yaml` changes nothing but the added line. Keys are resolved by reflecting over the `Config` struct's yaml tags, so an unknown key or a value of the wrong type is rejected before the file is touched. The write is atomic and keeps the file's symlink, owner, mode and line endings.

---------

Co-authored-by: silverwind <2021+silverwind@noreply.gitea.com>
Co-authored-by: silverwind <me@silverwind.io>
Reviewed-on: https://gitea.com/gitea/runner/pulls/1140
Reviewed-by: silverwind <2021+silverwind@noreply.gitea.com>
Reviewed-by: Lunny Xiao <xiaolunwen@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: bircni <bircni@icloud.com>
2026-08-05 16:48:25 +00:00

2.9 KiB

Using Rootless Docker withgitea-runner

Here is a simple example of how to set up gitea-runner with rootless Docker. It has been created with Debian, but other Linux should work the same way.

Note: This procedure needs a real login shell -- using sudo su or other method of accessing the account will fail some of the steps below.

As root:

  • Create a user to run both docker and gitea-runner. In this example, we use a non-privileged account called rootless.
 useradd -m rootless
 passwd rootless
 apt-get install -y uidmap # Not mentioned but needed for docker rootless.
  • Install docker-ce

  • (Recommended) Disable the system-wide Docker daemon

    systemctl disable --now docker.service docker.socket

As the rootless user:

for f in ./.bashrc.d/*.bash; do echo "Processing $f file..."; . "$f"; done
  • Create the .bashrc.d directory mkdir ~/.bashrc.d
  • Add the following lines to the /home/rootless/.bashrc.d/rootless-docker.bash:
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/home/rootless/.docker/run
export PATH=/home/rootless/bin:$PATH
export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/user/$(id -u)/docker.sock
  • Reboot. Ensure that the Docker process is working.
  • Create a directory for saving gitea-runner data between restarts

mkdir /home/rootless/gitea-runner

  • Register the runner from the data directory
 cd /home/rootless/gitea-runner
 gitea-runner register
  • Generate a gitea-runner configuration file in the data directory. Edit the file to adjust for the system.
 gitea-runner config generate >/home/rootless/gitea-runner/config
  • Create a new user-levelsystemd unit file as /home/rootless/.config/systemd/user/gitea-runner.service with the following contents:
 Description=Gitea Actions runner
 Documentation=https://gitea.com/gitea/runner
 After=docker.service

 [Service]
 Environment=PATH=/home/rootless/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/rootless/bin:/home/rootless/bin:/home/rootless/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
 Environment=DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/user/1001/docker.sock
 ExecStart=/usr/bin/gitea-runner daemon -c /home/rootless/gitea-runner/config
 ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID
 WorkingDirectory=/home/rootless/gitea-runner
 TimeoutSec=0
 RestartSec=2
 Restart=always
 StartLimitBurst=3
 StartLimitInterval=60s
 LimitNOFILE=infinity
 LimitNPROC=infinity
 LimitCORE=infinity
 TasksMax=infinity
 Delegate=yes
 Type=notify
 NotifyAccess=all
 KillMode=mixed

 [Install]
 WantedBy=default.target
  • Reboot

After the system restarts, check that thegitea-runner is working and that the runner is connected to Gitea.

 systemctl --user status gitea-runner
 journalctl --user -xeu gitea-runner