How I turned aws ec2 into an aws gitlab-runner

A GitLab Runner is an open-source application used to run jobs and send the results back to GitLab in a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline. GitLab Runner executes the steps defined in your .gitlab-ci.yml file. for example:

• Building your code

• Running tests

• Deploying applications

GitLab Runner uses executors to determine how to run a job for example shell, docker etc

Objective

• To set up an AWS EC2 instance as a GitLab Runner.

Requirements

• A server(vps, ec2, droplet)with at least 4gb of RAM

In order to be able to follow up on this tutorial you need practice. That means you need a linux/macbook machine. If yo are like me using windows don’t worry I got you covered. I will be using vagrant. You can check out how to install vagrant on their official website Vagrant Get Started Tutorial by HashiCorp or gitbash.

To get started you need to

• Login to your gitlab account

• Click on settings

• Click on CI/CD

• Click on Runners

• Click on Create project runner

• Type the tags (tags identifies each runner)

• Scroll down and click on create

You will see an interface like this

• Copy the command

• After you copy the first command paste it on you command line. I will paste mine on my vagrant (ubuntu 20) command line

To install gitlab-runner

• Open gitbash or vagrant

• ssh into the server

ssh -i file.pem ubuntu@ipaddress

• curl the script file

curl -L https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

• Update your operating system

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gitlab-runner -y

• Start and enable the service

sudo systemctl enable gitlab-runner
sudo systemctl start gitlab-runner

• To check gitlab-runner status

gitlab-runner status

• Paste the step 1 code on the terminal

• Press Enter twice

• Type the executor you want to use (in this case I used shell)

• You can see that it is configured successfully

• You can go back to your gitlab interface to verify. You can now run gitlab-ci jobs on the self hosted ec2 runner