SSH

Note: The SSH executor supports only scripts generated in Bash and the caching feature is currently not supported.

This is a simple executor that allows you to execute builds on a remote machine by executing commands over SSH.

Note: GitLab Runner will use the git lfs command if Git LFS is installed on the remote machine. Ensure Git LFS is up-to-date on any remote systems where GitLab Runner will run using SSH executor.

Overview

To use the SSH executor you need to specify executor = "ssh" under the [runners.ssh] section. For example: 

[[runners]]
  executor = "ssh"
  [runners.ssh]
    host = "example.com"
    port = "22"
    user = "root"
    password = "password"
    identity_file = "/path/to/identity/file"

You can use password or identity_file or both to authenticate against the server. GitLab Runner doesn’t implicitly read identity_file from /home/user/.ssh/id_(rsa|dsa|ecdsa). The identity_file needs to be explicitly specified.

The project’s source is checked out to: ~/builds/<short-token>/<concurrent-id>/<namespace>/<project-name>.

Where:

  • <short-token> is a shortened version of the Runner’s token (first 8 letters)
  • <concurrent-id> is a unique number, identifying the local job ID on the particular Runner in context of the project
  • <namespace> is the namespace where the project is stored on GitLab
  • <project-name> is the name of the project as it is stored on GitLab

To overwrite the ~/builds directory, specify the builds_dir options under [[runners]] section in config.toml.

If you want to upload job artifacts, install gitlab-runner on the host you are connecting to via SSH.

Security

The SSH executor is susceptible to MITM attacks (man-in-the-middle), because of the missing StrictHostKeyChecking option. This will be fixed in one of the future releases.