Forgejo Runner installation guide

The Forgejo Runner is a daemon that fetches workflows to run from a Forgejo instance, executes them, sends back with the logs and ultimately reports its success or failure.

It needs to be installed separately from the main Forgejo instance. For security reasons it is not recommended to install the runner on the same machine as the main instance.

Each Forgejo Runner release is published for all supported architectures as:

Binary installation

Downloading and installing the binary

Download the latest binary release and verify its signature:


$ export RUNNER_VERSION=$(curl -X 'GET' https://code.forgejo.org/api/v1/repos/forgejo/runner/releases/latest | jq .name -r | cut -c 2-)
$ wget -O forgejo-runner https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner/releases/download/v${RUNNER_VERSION}/forgejo-runner-${RUNNER_VERSION}-linux-amd64
$ chmod +x forgejo-runner
$ wget -O forgejo-runner.asc https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner/releases/download/v${RUNNER_VERSION}/forgejo-runner-${RUNNER_VERSION}-linux-amd64.asc
$ gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv EB114F5E6C0DC2BCDD183550A4B61A2DC5923710
$ gpg --verify forgejo-runner.asc forgejo-runner
Good signature from "Forgejo <contact@forgejo.org>"
		aka "Forgejo Releases <release@forgejo.org>"

Next, copy the downloaded binary to /usr/local/bin and make it executable:

$ cp forgejo-runner /usr/local/bin/forgejo-runner
$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/forgejo-runner

You should now be able to test the runner by running forgejo-runner -v:

$ forgejo-runner -v
forgejo-runner version v3.5.1

Setting up the runner user

Set up the user to run the daemon:

$ useradd --create-home runner

If the runner will be using Docker or Podman, ensure the runner user had access to the docker/podman socket. If you are using Docker, run:

$ usermod -aG docker runner

Setting up the container environment

The Forgejo runner relies on application containers (Docker, Podman, etc.) or system containers (LXC) to execute a workflow in an isolated environment. They need to be installed and configured independently.

  • Docker: See the Docker installation documentation for more information.

  • Podman: While Podman is generally compatible with Docker, it does not create a socket for managing containers by default (because it doesn’t usually need one).

    If the Forgejo runner complains about “daemon Docker Engine socket not found”, or “cannot ping the docker daemon”, you can use Podman to provide a Docker compatible socket from an unprivileged user and pass that socket on to the runner by executing:

    $ podman system service -t 0 &
$ DOCKER_HOST=unix://${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/podman/podman.sock ./forgejo-runner daemon

  • LXC: For jobs to run in LXC containers, the Forgejo runner needs passwordless sudo access for all lxc-* commands on a Debian GNU/Linux bookworm system where LXC is installed. The LXC helpers can be used as follows to create a suitable container:

    $ git clone https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/lxc-helpers
$ sudo cp -a lxc-helpers/lxc-helpers{,-lib}.sh /usr/local/bin
$ lxc-helpers.sh lxc_container_create myrunner
$ lxc-helpers.sh lxc_container_start myrunner
$ lxc-helpers.sh lxc_container_user_install myrunner 1000 debian

    NOTE: Multiarch Go builds and binfmt need bookworm to produce and test binaries on a single machine for people who do not have access to dedicated hardware. If this is not needed, installing the Forgejo runner on bullseye will also work.

    The Forgejo runner can then be installed and run within the myrunner container.

    $ lxc-helpers.sh lxc_container_run forgejo-runners -- sudo --user debian bash
$ sudo apt-get install docker.io wget gnupg2
$ wget -O forgejo-runner https://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner/releases/download/v3.4.1/forgejo-runner-amd64
...

    Warning: LXC containers do not provide a level of security that makes them safe for potentially malicious users to run jobs. They provide an excellent isolation for jobs that may accidentally damage the system they run on.

  • Host: There is no requirement for jobs that run directly on the host.

    Warning: there is no isolation at all and a single job can permanently destroy the host.

Registering the runner

To receive tasks from the Forgejo instance, the runner needs to be registered.

To register the runner, switch user to the runner user account, and return to the home directory:

$ sudo su runner
$ whoami
runner
$ cd ~
$ pwd
/home/runner

From here, follow the registration instructions.

Configuration

The default configuration for the runner can be displayed with forgejo-runner generate-config, stored in a config.yml file, modified and used instead of the default with the --config flag.

$ forgejo-runner generate-config > config.yml
# Example configuration file, it's safe to copy this as the default config file without any modification.

log:
  # The level of logging, can be trace, debug, info, warn, error, fatal
  level: info

runner:
  # Where to store the registration result.
  file: .runner
  # Execute how many tasks concurrently at the same time.
  capacity: 1
  # Extra environment variables to run jobs.
  envs:
    A_TEST_ENV_NAME_1: a_test_env_value_1
    A_TEST_ENV_NAME_2: a_test_env_value_2
  # Extra environment variables to run jobs from a file.
  # It will be ignored if it's empty or the file doesn't exist.
  env_file: .env
  # The timeout for a job to be finished.
  # Please note that the Forgejo instance also has a timeout (3h by default) for the job.
  # So the job could be stopped by the Forgejo instance if it's timeout is shorter than this.
  timeout: 3h
  # Whether skip verifying the TLS certificate of the Forgejo instance.
  insecure: false
  # The timeout for fetching the job from the Forgejo instance.
  fetch_timeout: 5s
  # The interval for fetching the job from the Forgejo instance.
  fetch_interval: 2s
  # The labels of a runner are used to determine which jobs the runner can run, and how to run them.
  # Like: ["macos-arm64:host", "ubuntu-latest:docker://node:16-bullseye", "ubuntu-22.04:docker://node:16-bullseye"]
  # If it's empty when registering, it will ask for inputting labels.
  # If it's empty when execute `daemon`, will use labels in `.runner` file.
  labels: []

cache:
  # Enable cache server to use actions/cache.
  enabled: true
  # The directory to store the cache data.
  # If it's empty, the cache data will be stored in $HOME/.cache/actcache.
  dir: ""
  # The host of the cache server.
  # It's not for the address to listen, but the address to connect from job containers.
  # So 0.0.0.0 is a bad choice, leave it empty to detect automatically.
  host: ""
  # The port of the cache server.
  # 0 means to use a random available port.
  port: 0

container:
  # Specifies the network to which the container will connect.
  # Could be host, bridge or the name of a custom network.
  # If it's empty, create a network automatically.
  network: ""
  # Whether to create networks with IPv6 enabled. Requires the Docker daemon to be set up accordingly.
  # Only takes effect if "network" is set to "".
  enable_ipv6: false
  # Whether to use privileged mode or not when launching task containers (privileged mode is required for Docker-in-Docker).
  privileged: false
  # And other options to be used when the container is started (eg, --add-host=my.forgejo.url:host-gateway).
  options:
  # The parent directory of a job's working directory.
  # If it's empty, /workspace will be used.
  workdir_parent:
  # Volumes (including bind mounts) can be mounted to containers. Glob syntax is supported, see https://github.com/gobwas/glob
  # You can specify multiple volumes. If the sequence is empty, no volumes can be mounted.
  # For example, if you only allow containers to mount the `data` volume and all the json files in `/src`, you should change the config to:
  # valid_volumes:
  #   - data
  #   - /src/*.json
  # If you want to allow any volume, please use the following configuration:
  # valid_volumes:
  #   - '**'
  valid_volumes: []
  # overrides the docker client host with the specified one.
  # If it's empty, act_runner will find an available docker host automatically.
  # If it's "-", act_runner will find an available docker host automatically, but the docker host won't be mounted to the job containers and service containers.
  # If it's not empty or "-", the specified docker host will be used. An error will be returned if it doesn't work.
  docker_host: ""

host:
  # The parent directory of a job's working directory.
  # If it's empty, $HOME/.cache/act/ will be used.
  workdir_parent:

Cache configuration

Some actions such as https://code.forgejo.org/actions/cache or https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-go can communicate with the Forgejo runner to save and restore commonly used files such as compilation dependencies. They are stored as compressed tar archives, fetched when a job starts and saved when it completes.

If the machine has a fast disk, uploading the cache when the job starts may significantly reduce the bandwidth required to download and rebuild dependencies.

If the machine on which the Forgejo runner is running has a slow disk and plenty of CPU and bandwidth, it may be better to not activate the cache as it can slow down the execution time.

Starting the runner

After the runner has been registered, it can be started by running forgejo-runner daemon as the runner user, in the home directory:

$ whoami
runner
$ pwd
/home/runner
$ forgejo-runner daemon
INFO[2024-09-14T19:19:14+02:00] Starting runner daemon

Running as a systemd service

To automatically start the runner when the system starts, copy this file to /etc/systemd/system/forgejo-runner.service.

Then run systemctl daemon-reload to reload the unit files. Run systemctl start forgejo-runner.service to test the new service. If everything works, run systemctl enable forgejo-runner.service to enable auto-starting the service on boot.

Use journalctl -u forgejo-runner.service to read the runner logs.

OCI image installation

The OCI images are built from the Dockerfile which is found in the source directory. It contains the forgejo-runner binary.

$ docker run --rm code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner:3.4.1 forgejo-runner --version
forgejo-runner version v3.4.1

It does not run as root:

$ docker run --rm code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner:3.4.1 id
uid=1000 gid=1000 groups=1000

One way to run the Docker image is via Docker Compose. To do so, first prepare a data directory with non-root permissions (in this case, we pick 1001:1001):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

mkdir -p data
touch data/.runner
mkdir -p data/.cache

chown -R 1001:1001 data/.runner
chown -R 1001:1001 data/.cache
chmod 775 data/.runner
chmod 775 data/.cache
chmod g+s data/.runner
chmod g+s data/.cache

After running this script with bash setup.sh, define the following docker-compose.yml:

version: '3.8'

services:
  docker-in-docker:
    image: docker:dind
    container_name: 'docker_dind'
    privileged: 'true'
    command: ['dockerd', '-H', 'tcp://0.0.0.0:2375', '--tls=false']
    restart: 'unless-stopped'

  gitea:
    image: 'code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner:3.4.1'
    links:
      - docker-in-docker
    depends_on:
      docker-in-docker:
        condition: service_started
    container_name: 'runner'
    environment:
      DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker-in-docker:2375
    # User without root privileges, but with access to `./data`.
    user: 1001:1001
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
    restart: 'unless-stopped'

    command: '/bin/sh -c "while : ; do sleep 1 ; done ;"'

Here, we’re not running the forgejo-runner daemon yet because we need to register it first. Please note that in a recent install of docker docker-compose is not a separate command but should be run as docker compose.

Follow the registration instructions below by starting the runner service with docker-compose up -d and entering it via:

docker exec -it runner /bin/sh

In this shell, run the forgejo-runner register command as described below. After that is done, take the service down again with docker-compose down and modify the command to:

command: '/bin/sh -c "sleep 5; forgejo-runner daemon"'

Here, the sleep allows the docker-in-docker service to start up before the forgejo-runner daemon is started.

More docker compose examples are provided to demonstrate how to install the OCI image to successfully run a workflow.

Standard registration

The Forgejo runner needs to connect to a Forgejo instance and must be registered before doing so. It will give it permission to read the repositories and send back information to Forgejo such as the logs or its status.

A special kind of token is needed and can be obtained from the Create new runner button:

  • in /admin/actions/runners to accept workflows from all repositories.
  • in /org/{org}/settings/actions/runners to accept workflows from all repositories within the organization.
  • in /user/settings/actions/runners to accept workflows from all repositories of the logged in user
  • in /{owner}/{repository}/settings/actions/runners to accept workflows from a single repository.

Screenshot showing runner registration popup

To register the runner, excecute forgejo-runner register and fill in the prompts. For example:

$ forgejo-runner register
INFO Registering runner, arch=arm64, os=linux, version=v3.5.1.
WARN Runner in user-mode.
INFO Enter the Forgejo instance URL (for example, https://next.forgejo.org/):
https://code.forgejo.org/
INFO Enter the runner token:
6om01axzegBu98YCpsFtda4Go2DuJe7BEepzz2F3HY
INFO Enter the runner name (if set empty, use hostname: runner-host):
my-forgejo-runner
INFO Enter the runner labels, leave blank to use the default labels (comma-separated, for example, ubuntu-20.04:docker://node:20-bookworm,ubuntu-18.04:docker://node:20-bookworm):

INFO Registering runner, name=my-forgejo-runner, instance=https://code.forgejo.org/, labels=[docker:docker://node:20-bullseye].
DEBU Successfully pinged the Forgejo instance server
INFO Runner registered successfully.

This will create a .runner file in the current directory that looks like:

{
  "WARNING": "This file is automatically generated by act-runner. Do not edit it manually unless you know what you are doing. Removing this file will cause act runner to re-register as a new runner.",
  "id": 42,
  "uuid": "d2ax6368-9c20-4dy0-9a5a-e09c53854zb5",
  "name": "my-forgejo-runner",
  "token": "864e6019009e1635d98adf3935b305d32494d42a",
  "address": "https://code.forgejo.org/",
  "labels": ["docker:docker://node:20-bullseye"]
}

To decide which labels to use, see Choosing labels.

The same token can be used multiple times to register any number of runners, independent of each other.

Offline registration

When Infrastructure as Code (Ansible, kubernetes, etc.) is used to deploy and configure both Forgejo and the Forgejo runner, it may be more convenient for it to generate a secret and share it with both.

The forgejo forgejo-cli actions register --secret <secret> subcommand can be used to register the runner with the Forgejo instance and the forgejo-runner create-runner-file --secret <secret> subcommand can be used to configure the Forgejo runner with the credentials that will allow it to start picking up tasks from the Forgejo instances as soon as it comes online.

For instance, on the machine running Forgejo:

$ forgejo forgejo-cli actions register --name runner-name --scope myorganization \
    --secret 7c31591e8b67225a116d4a4519ea8e507e08f71f

and on the machine on which the Forgejo runner is installed:

$ forgejo-runner create-runner-file --instance https://example.conf \
        --secret 7c31591e8b67225a116d4a4519ea8e507e08f71f

The secret must be a 40-character long string of hexadecimal numbers. The first 16 characters will be used as an identifier for the runner, while the rest is the actual secret. It is possible to update the secret of an existing runner by running the command again on the Forgejo machine, with the last 24 characters updated.

For instance, the command below would change the secret set by the previous command:

$ forgejo forgejo-cli actions register --name runner-name --scope myorganization \
    --secret 7c31591e8b67225a84e8e06633b9578e793664c3
#              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This part is identical

The registration command on the Forgejo side is mostly idempotent, with the exception of the runner labels. If the command is run without --labels, they will be reset, and the runner won’t set them back until it is restarted. The --keep-labels option can be used to preserve the existing labels.

Enabling IPv6 in Docker & Podman networks

When a Forgejo runner creates its own Docker or Podman networks, IPv6 is not enabled by default, and must be enabled explicitly in the Forgejo runner configuration.

Docker only: The Docker daemon requires additional configuration to enable IPv6. To make use of IPv6 with Docker, you need to provide a /etc/docker/daemon.json configuration file with at least the following keys:

{
  "ipv6": true,
  "experimental": true,
  "ip6tables": true,
  "fixed-cidr-v6": "fd00:d0ca:1::/64",
  "default-address-pools": [
    { "base": "172.17.0.0/16", "size": 24 },
    { "base": "fd00:d0ca:2::/104", "size": 112 }
  ]
}

Afterwards restart the Docker daemon with systemctl restart docker.service.

NOTE: These are example values. While this setup should work out of the box, it may not meet your requirements. Please refer to the Docker documentation regarding enabling IPv6 and allocating IPv6 addresses to subnets dynamically.

Docker & Podman: To test IPv6 connectivity in Forgejo runner-created networks, create a small workflow such as the following:

---
on: push
jobs:
  ipv6:
    runs-on: docker
    steps:
      - run: |
          apt update; apt install --yes curl
          curl -s -o /dev/null http://ipv6.google.com

If you run this action with forgejo-runner exec, you should expect this job fail:

$ forgejo-runner exec
...
| curl: (7) Couldn't connect to server
[ipv6.yml/ipv6]   ❌  Failure - apt update; apt install --yes curl
curl -s -o /dev/null http://ipv6.google.com
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] exitcode '7': failure
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up services for job ipv6
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up container for job ipv6
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up network for job ipv6, and network name is: FORGEJO-ACTIONS-TASK-push_WORKFLOW-ipv6-yml_JOB-ipv6-network
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] 🏁  Job failed

To actually enable IPv6 with forgejo-runner exec, the flag --enable-ipv6 must be provided. If you run this again with forgejo-runner exec --enable-ipv6, the job should succeed:

$ forgejo-runner exec --enable-ipv6
...
[ipv6.yml/ipv6]   ✅  Success - Main apt update; apt install --yes curl
curl -s -o /dev/null http://ipv6.google.com
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up services for job ipv6
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up container for job ipv6
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] Cleaning up network for job ipv6, and network name is: FORGEJO-ACTIONS-TASK-push_WORKFLOW-ipv6-yml_JOB-ipv6-network
[ipv6.yml/ipv6] 🏁  Job succeeded

Finally, if this test was successful, enable IPv6 in the config.yml file of the Forgejo runner daemon and restart the daemon:

container:
  enable_ipv6: true

Now, Forgejo runner will create networks with IPv6 enabled, and workflow containers will be assigned addresses from the pools defined in the Docker daemon configuration.

Packaging

NixOS

The forgejo-actions-runner recipe is released in NixOS.

Please note that the services.forgejo-actions-runner.instances.<name>.labels key may be set to [] (an empty list) to use the packaged Forgejo instance list. One of virtualisation.docker.enable or virtualisation.podman.enable will need to be set. The default Forgejo image list is populated with docker images.

IPv6 support is not enabled by default for docker. The following snippet enables this.

virtualisation.docker = {
  daemon.settings = {
    fixed-cidr-v6 = "fd00::/80";
    ipv6 = true;
  };
};

If you would like to use docker runners in combination with cache actions, be sure to add docker bridge interfaces “br-*” to the firewalls’ trusted interfaces:

networking.firewall.trustedInterfaces = [ "br-+" ];
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