Install GitLab Runner using the official GitLab repositories

We provide packages for the currently supported versions of Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS.

Distribution Version End of Life date
Debian jessie June 2020
Debian stretch approx. 2022
Debian buster  
Ubuntu xenial April 2021
Ubuntu bionic April 2023
Ubuntu focal April 2025
Mint sarah approx. 2021
Mint serena approx. 2021
Mint sonya approx. 2021
RHEL/CentOS 6 November 2020
RHEL/CentOS 7 June 2024
RHEL/CentOS 8 May 2029
Fedora 30 approx. June 2020

Prerequisites

If you want to use the Docker executor, make sure to install Docker before using the Runner. Read how to install Docker for your distribution.

Installing the Runner

Important: If you are using or upgrading from a version prior to GitLab Runner 10, read how to upgrade to the new version. If you want to install a version prior to GitLab Runner 10, visit the old docs.

To install the Runner:

  1. Add GitLab’s official repository:

    # For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
    curl -L https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.deb.sh | sudo bash
    
    # For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
    curl -L https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash
    
    Note: Debian users should use APT pinning.
  2. Install the latest version of GitLab Runner, or skip to the next step to install a specific version:

    Note: Debian buster users should disable skel to prevent No such file or directory Job failures
    # For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
    sudo apt-get install gitlab-runner
    
    # For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
    sudo yum install gitlab-runner
    
  3. To install a specific version of GitLab Runner:

    # for DEB based systems
    apt-cache madison gitlab-runner
    sudo apt-get install gitlab-runner=10.0.0
    
    # for RPM based systems
    yum list gitlab-runner --showduplicates | sort -r
    sudo yum install gitlab-runner-10.0.0-1
    
  4. Register the Runner

After completing the step above, the Runner should be started already being ready to be used by your projects!

Make sure that you read the FAQ section which describes some of the most common problems with GitLab Runner.

APT pinning

A native package called gitlab-ci-multi-runner is available in Debian Stretch. By default, when installing gitlab-runner, that package from the official repositories will have a higher priority.

If you want to use our package, you should manually set the source of the package. The best way is to add the pinning configuration file.

If you do this, the next update of the Runner’s package - whether it will be done manually or automatically - will be done using the same source:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/pin-gitlab-runner.pref
Explanation: Prefer GitLab provided packages over the Debian native ones
Package: gitlab-runner
Pin: origin packages.gitlab.com
Pin-Priority: 1001
EOF

Updating the Runner

Simply execute to install latest version:

# For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gitlab-runner

# For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
sudo yum update
sudo yum install gitlab-runner

Manually download packages

You can manually download and install the packages if necessary.

Disable skel

Introduced in GitLab 12.10.

Sometimes the default skeleton (skel) directory causes issues for GitLab Runner, and it fails to run a job. When installing GitLab Runner, set the environment variable GITLAB_RUNNER_DISABLE_SKEL to true before you install the package. This will create the $HOME directory without the files inside of skel:

For example:

# For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
export GITLAB_RUNNER_DISABLE_SKEL=true; sudo -E apt-get install gitlab-runner

# For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
export GITLAB_RUNNER_DISABLE_SKEL=true; sudo -E yum install gitlab-runner

Upgrading to GitLab Runner 10

To upgrade GitLab Runner from a version prior to 10.0:

  1. Remove the old repository:

    # For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
    sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/runner_gitlab-ci-multi-runner.list
    
    # For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
    sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/runner_gitlab-ci-multi-runner.repo
    
  2. Follow the same steps when installing the Runner, without registering it and using the new repository.

  3. For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, run:

    sudo /usr/share/gitlab-runner/post-install
    
    Important: If you don’t run the above command, you will be left with no service file. Follow issue #2786 for more information.