Self-hosted GitHub runners on Equinix Metal

self-hosted-runners-on-eq-metal.md

• Get an Equinix Metal API account and API key
• Downlaod metal-cli
  • https://github.com/equinix/metal-cli
• Fork metal-cli to your own github
  • https://github.com/equinix/metal-cli/fork
• Disable the actions on your fork for now till we're ready for them. :)
• Deploy a new machine on Equinix Metal
  • On stream we'll use the GUI, but the CLI will also work
  • metal device create -p $METAL_PROJECT_ID -P c3.medium.x86 -m da -H github-runner-test -O ubuntu_22_04
• Requirements for runners
• How to add a runner
• Navigate to your metal-cli fork, for me it's https://github.com/cprivitere/metal-cli
• Go to the 'settings' tab
• On the left bar, click 'actions', then 'runners'
• Click the 'new self-hosted runner' button
• Select the correct OS options, for our demo it's Linux x64.
• You should now see instructions for downloading, configuring, and using the github runner software.
• SSH to the machine you created earlier
• Install gcc, create a new user, and switch to it, the Github runner won't allow itself to be run as root

  apt update
  apt install build-essential gcc
  useradd -m ghrunner -s /bin/bash
  su - ghrunner

• Copy and paste the download and configure sections from the 'Add New Runner' page
  • Take the defaults by just pressing enter when it asks for the group, name, labels, and work folder
  • Don't forget to run ./run.sh
  • If you were doing this as a long lived runner in production this would be better executed as a systemctl service...but long lived runners are actually not recommended, so just running ./run.sh inline is fine for today.
• Your runner should now say it's 'Listening for Jobs'
• Let's go back to our fork of metal-cli.
• Click on 'Settings' -> 'Actions' -> 'Runners' again in the repo and you should see your new self-hosted runner
• Now we go edit our github actions workflow to use a self-hosted runner
• Edit metal-cli/.github/workflows/test.yml and replace the line:

      runs-on: ubuntu-latest

  with

      runs-on: self-hosted

• Also add

    workflow_dispatch:

  underneath the on: line
• You test.yml file should now look like:

  name: Go Tests
  on:
    pull_request:
    workflow_dispatch:
  jobs:
    test:
      runs-on: self-hosted
      timeout-minutes: 10
      steps:
      - name: Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v4.0.0
        with:
          go-version: '1.19'
      - name: Check out code into the Go module directory
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Get dependencies
        run: go mod download
      - name: Build
        run: go build -v ./...
      - name: TF tests
        run: go test -v -cover -parallel 4 ./...

• Commit your changes
• Go back to 'Settings' -> 'Actions' -> 'General' and Allow all actions and reusable workflows.
• Now click on Actions and click on 'Go Tests' on the left side.
• Click the 'Run workflow' drop down on the right side and run it for the main branch.
• Now watch the output on your github runner and the output inside github.
• Running job: test should appear