Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment

Gitlab

Gitlab CI/CD Setup with EC2 Runner

This article has instructions for setting and testing a CI/CD pipeline with a EC2 runner.

Instructions to Setup a gitlab runner on EC2

  1. Validate your Gitlab account with your Credit Card.
  2. Create an EC2 instance with a security group containing your IP address in the inbound rules.
  3. Create and attach an IAM role to the EC2 instance.
    • Select the instance and go to Actions ➡️ Security ➡️ Modify IAM role
    • Select the appropriate IAM role (if already present) or create a new role with appropriate permissions and attach it to the EC2 instance.
  4. SSH into the EC2 instance as ubuntu user - ssh ubuntu@<INSTANCE_PUBLIC_IP_ADDRESS>
  5. Setup a Gitlab runner in the EC2 instance (instructions below, also see Setup GitLab runner on AWS-ec2 in Related Articles except for first curl command)
    • curl -L "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.deb.sh" | sudo bash
    • sudo apt-get update
    • sudo apt-get install gitlab-runner
    • Check if the runner is installed correctly
    • sudo gitlab-runner --version
    • sudo gitlab-runner status
  6. Register a Gitlab Runner to Gitlab
    • Gitlab ➡️Login ➡️Project Repo ➡️ Settings ➡️ CI/CD ➡️ Runners➡️ Expand
    • Expand the runner tab and you’ll see two things: the URL and theregistration token.
    • Keep a copy of them as we are going to use them to register the runner.
    • Inside the EC2 instance, register the runner by running the following command:
    • sudo gitlab-runner register
    • You’ll be prompted for 6 inputs.
      • Enter the GitLab instance URL: https://gitlab.com
      • Enter the registration token: We copied it from the project setting above. These are private and Do not share with anyone.
      • Enter a description for the runner: Your choice
      • Enter tags for the runner (comma-separated):
        • These tags are most important as we are gonna use them in the pipelines to uniquely identify the runner
      • Enter an optional maintenance note for the runner.
      • Enter an executor:
        • Note: the executor might change use-case to use-case. Eg.
          • We need a docker container and perform an action on that, In this case, we use “docker” as executor.
          • We need to use shell, In this case, we use “shell” as executor.
  7. Start the runner on EC2 using
    • sudo gitlab-runner start
  8. You can now find this runner at Gitlab ➡️Login ➡️Project Repo ➡️ Settings ➡️ CI/CD ➡️ Runners➡️ Expand ➡️ Specific Runners

### (Optional) Instructions to Setup AWS-CLI on EC2

Setup the AWS CLI in the EC2 instance by running the following commands

curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
sudo apt-install unzip
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

Verify the installation using the following command

aws --version

### (Optional) Instructions to Setup Docker on EC2

Setup Docker in the EC2 instance by running the following commands

sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install docker.io
sudo snap install docker
# sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock
sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

Verify that docker was installed correctly

docker --version
sudo docker run hello-world
sudo docker images
sudo docker ps -a

Setting up a CI Pipeline to use the Gitlab Runner

We’ve created a runner with the tag roadrunner. If you’ve used a different tag, replace itab in the below code with your tag name.

Inside the project’s GitLab repo, create a .gitlab-ci.yml file with the following contents:

default:
  tags:
    - roadrunner

verify-aws-docker:
  stage: test
  script:
    - aws --version
    - docker --version

Push this file to your GitLab repo and check the Pipeline runs by going to 🚀 (CI/CD) ➡️ Pipelines on the left hand side panel and click on the most recent pipeline run to check the success/failure of the job.

Gitlab CI/CD Reference

Source: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/

Gitlab CI/CD Disable Pipeline

When you disable GitLab CI/CD:

  • The CI/CD item in the left sidebar is removed.
  • The /pipelines and /jobs pages are no longer available.
  • Existing jobs and pipelines are hidden, not removed.

To disable GitLab CI/CD in your project:

  1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find your project.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
  3. Expand Visibility, project features, permissions.
  4. In the Repository section, turn off CI/CD.
  5. Select Save changes.

Source: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/enable_or_disable_ci.html