Container runner installation (Kubernetes)

Cloud

Prerequisites

To install container runners and run jobs, you will need to have root access, and have the following set up and installed:

Kubernetes 1.12+
Helm 3.x
A Kubernetes namespace without any other workloads
The checkout step configures Git to checkout over SSH - ensure that your cluster is configured to allow outbound connections over port 22 if you wish to use it
The CircleCI CLI if you wish to install runners from the command line

Self-hosted runner terms agreement

1. Create namespace and resource class

2. Container runner installation

Add the container runner Helm repo by running the following command:

helm repo add container-agent https://packagecloud.io/circleci/container-agent/helm

Next, run the following:
```
helm repo update
```
Then, run the following command to create the circleci Kubernetes namespace:
```
kubectl create namespace circleci
```

Create a file called values.yaml file containing the following:

agent:
  resourceClasses:
    namespace/my-rc:
      token: <resource_class_token>

Finally, run the following command:

helm install container-agent container-agent/container-agent -n circleci -f values.yaml

Container runner configuration example

Once you have installed the container runner within your cluster, create and trigger a CircleCI job that uses the Docker executor to validate the installation. The fields you must set for a specific job to run using your container runners are:

image:
resource_class: <namespace>/<resource-class>

Simple example of how you could set up a job (cimg/base:2021.11 is a commonly used CircleCI Docker image):

version: 2.1

jobs:
  build:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/base:2021.11
    resource_class: <namespace>/<resource-class>
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run: echo "Hi I'm on Runners!"

workflows:
  build-workflow:
    jobs:
      - build

Do not use an existing job that uses setup_remote_docker (see Building container images for more information).

Troubleshooting

Refer to the Troubleshoot Container Runner section of the Troubleshoot Self-hosted Runner guide if you encounter issues installing or running container runner.

Additional resources

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