Github Actions Runner Controller on Kubernetes

Let's start with the github actions-runner-controller documentation

Create a kubernetes cluster

In this guide we we''ll need a Kubernetes cluster for testing. Let's create one using kind

cd github/actions/kubernetes

kind create cluster --name demo --image kindest/node:v1.28.0

Test the cluster:

kubectl get nodes
NAME                 STATUS   ROLES           AGE   VERSION
demo-control-plane   Ready    control-plane   59s   v1.28.0

Next up, I will be running a small container where I will be doing all the work from: You can skip this part if you already have kubectl and helm on your machine.

docker run -it --rm --net host -v ${HOME}/.kube/:/root/.kube/ -v ${PWD}:/work -w /work alpine sh

Install kubectl

apk add --no-cache curl
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/`curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt`/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl
mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Install helm

HELM_VERSION=3.14.1
curl -LO https://get.helm.sh/helm-v${HELM_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -C /tmp/ -zxvf helm-v${HELM_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
rm helm-v${HELM_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
mv /tmp/linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/helm
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/helm

Let's go to the Quickstart Guide

We can deploy the controller using helm

VERSION=0.8.2
NAMESPACE="github"
helm install arc \
    --namespace "${NAMESPACE}" \
    --create-namespace \
    --version ${VERSION} \
    oci://ghcr.io/actions/actions-runner-controller-charts/gha-runner-scale-set-controller

Once chart is deployed, we can see the controller running in the github namespace

kubectl -n github get pods

Now this pod will not do anything, since its not authenticated with any Github organisation or repository
We can check the logs to see what it's doing:

kubectl -n github logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=gha-rs-controller

To make it useful, we need to add it to our repo or organisation by Authenticating to Github

Create a new Github App for your account or organization.

Once we have created our Github App, we need to configure its authentication by creating a kubernetes secret with the authentication details of the app.
When we have a .pem file , we can convert it to a single line:

awk 'NF {sub(/\r/, ""); printf "%s\\n",$0;}' yourfile.pem

kubectl create secret generic github-app-secret \
   --namespace=github \
   --from-literal=github_app_id=xxxxx \
   --from-literal=github_app_installation_id=xxxxx \
   --from-literal=github_app_private_key='-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----xxxxxx-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----'

Now we can upgrade our chart to apply the authentication changes

VERSION=0.8.2
NAMESPACE="github"
helm upgrade arc \
    --namespace "${NAMESPACE}" \
    --create-namespace \
    --version ${VERSION} \
    --values values.yaml \
    oci://ghcr.io/actions/actions-runner-controller-charts/gha-runner-scale-set-controller

Create your own runner

The documentation showcases how to customise the runner with the helm values file

This allows us to customer the pod template for our runner.
Let's create a basic one:

template:
  spec:
    containers:
      - name: runner
        image: "custom-registry.io/actions-runner:latest"
        imagePullPolicy: Always
        command: ["/home/runner/run.sh"]

We'll need to use the helm upgrade to apply the changes again.

We can also set our runner name using the values file using the advanced configuration options

runnerScaleSetName: "marcels-runner"

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Github Actions Runner Controller on Kubernetes

Create a kubernetes cluster

Create your own runner

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