GitHub Runner

Environment variables

The following environment variables allows you to control the configuration parameters.

Name	Description	Required/Default value
RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL	The runner will be linked to this repository URL	Required if RUNNER_ORGANIZATION_URL is not provided
RUNNER_ORGANIZATION_URL	The runner will be linked to this organization URL. (Self-hosted runners API for organizations is currently in public beta and subject to changes)	Required if RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL is not provided
GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN	Personal Access Token. Used to dynamically fetch a new runner token (recommended, see below).	Required if RUNNER_TOKEN is not provided.
RUNNER_TOKEN	Runner token provided by GitHub in the Actions page. These tokens are valid for a short period.	Required if GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN is not provided
RUNNER_WORK_DIRECTORY	Runner's work directory	"_work"
RUNNER_NAME	Name of the runner displayed in the GitHub UI	Hostname of the container
RUNNER_LABELS	Extra labels in addition to the default: 'self-hosted,Linux,X64' (based on your OS and architecture)	""
RUNNER_REPLACE_EXISTING	"true" will replace existing runner with the same name, "false" will use a random name if there is conflict	"true"

Runner Token

In order to link your runner to your repository/organization, you need to provide a token. There is two way of passing the token :

• via GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN (recommended), containing a Personnal Access Token. This token will be used to dynamically fetch a new runner token, as runner tokens are valid for a short period of time.
  • For a single-repository runner, your PAT should have repo scopes.
  • For an organization runner, your PAT should have admin:org scopes.
• via RUNNER_TOKEN. This token is displayed in the Actions settings page of your organization/repository, when opening the "Add Runner" page.

Runner auto-update behavior

The GitHub runner (the binary) will update itself when receiving a job, if a new release is available. In order to allow the runner to exit and restart by itself, the binary is started by a supervisord process.