The system services of GitLab Runner

GitLab Runner uses the Go service library to detect the underlying OS and eventually install the service file based on the init system.

When GitLab Runner is installed, the service file is automatically created:

• systemd: /etc/systemd/system/gitlab-runner.service
• Upstart: /etc/init/gitlab-runner

Setting custom environment variables

You can run GitLab Runner with custom environment variables. For example, you want to define GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS in the runner’s environment. This action is different from the environment configuration setting, which defines the variables that are automatically added to all jobs executed by a runner.

Customizing systemd

For runners that use systemd, create /etc/systemd/system/gitlab-runner.service.d/env.conf using one Environment=key=value line for each variable to export.

For example:

[Service]
Environment=GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/etc/gitlab-runner/gce-credentials.json

Then reload the configuration:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart gitlab-runner.service

Customizing Upstart

For runners that use Upstart, create /etc/init/gitlab-runner.override and export the desired variables.

For example:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/etc/gitlab-runner/gce-credentials.json"

Restart the runner for this to take effect.

Overriding default stopping behavior

In some cases, you might want to override the default behavior of the service.

For example, when you upgrade GitLab Runner, you should stop it gracefully until all running jobs are finished. However, systemd, Upstart, or other services might immediately restart the process without even noticing.

So, when you upgrade GitLab Runner, the installation script kills, and restarts the runner process that was probably handling new jobs at the time.

Overriding systemd

For runners that use systemd, create /etc/systemd/system/gitlab-runner.service.d/kill.conf with the following content:

[Service]
TimeoutStopSec=7200
KillSignal=SIGQUIT

After adding these two settings to the systemd unit configuration, you can stop the runner. After the runner stops, systemd uses SIGQUIT as the kill signal to stop the process. Additionally, a two-hour timeout is set for the stop command. If any jobs don’t terminate gracefully before this timeout, systemd kills the process by using SIGKILL.

Overriding Upstart

For runners that use Upstart, create /etc/init/gitlab-runner.override with the following content:

kill signal SIGQUIT
kill timeout 7200

After adding these two settings to the Upstart unit configuration, you can stop the runner. Upstart does the same as systemd above.