Creating a dockerized Gitlab Runner with Docker Compose

Quick post to show my configuration. I gave up using docker run commands for Gitlab Runners. All docker-compose configuration is checked into git and it is a much more sustainable setup.

Add the following service to your Gitlab’s docker-compose.yml. Note that the container must be linked to your Gitlab container.

Docker Compose File

runner:
    restart: unless-stopped
    image: gitlab/gitlab-runner:alpine
    container_name: gr
    links:
      - gitlab
    volumes:
      - /home/daniel/docker-data/gitlab-ci-data:/etc/gitlab-runner:Z
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    environment:
      - CI_SERVER_URL=http://gitlab/
      - REGISTRATION_TOKEN=yourtoken

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Run docker-compose up -d runner and then register the runner manually using docker exec shown below. The host and token are prefilled, most things you can skip. WHen it asks for base image I typed alpine:latest

docker exec -it gr /bin/bash
bash-4.4# gitlab-runner register

In all likelihood you have to change your runner’s config.toml file in the containers gitlab-ci-data directory (see volumes section). I had to enable privileged mode and add "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock" to the array of volumes below.

[[runners]]
  name = "entity-controller"
  url = "http://gitlab/"
  token = "your_yoken"
  executor = "docker"
  [runners.custom_build_dir]
  [runners.docker]
    tls_verify = false
    image = "docker"
    privileged = true
    disable_entrypoint_overwrite = false
    oom_kill_disable = false
    disable_cache = false
    volumes = ["/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock", "/cache"]
    shm_size = 0
  [runners.cache]
    [runners.cache.s3]
    [runners.cache.gcs]
  [runners.custom]
    run_exec = ""

Once done, save and restart the container with docker-compose restart runner.