Gitea Actions self-hosted runners — Ansible

Provisions act_runner instances as systemd services. One host can run runners for multiple projects (e.g. gatehouse-api + gatehouse-ui); each project gets its own runner name, install dir, label set, repo URL, and registration token.

Layout

ansible.cfg                 inventory + ssh defaults
inventory.ini               stage / prod host groups (set ansible_host)
group_vars/all.yml          pinned act_runner version + sha256, gitea_instance URL
host_vars/<host>.yml        runner_env + per-project `runners` matrix
tasks/install_project.yml   reads token, expands count -> N instances
tasks/install_one_runner.yml  download/register/service one runner
install-runner.yml          the playbook

Runner naming

name: <host>-<project>-<env>-<N> e.g. stage01-gatehouse-api-stage-1
dir: /home/gitea-runner/act-runner-<project>-<N>
labels: project_spec.labels (comma-separated, e.g. self-hosted,linux,stage)
service: gitea-runner-<project>-<N>.service

Before first run — pin act_runner version

Check act_runner releases for the latest stable version.
Download act_runner-<version>-linux-amd64.sha256 from the release page.
Update act_runner_version and act_runner_sha256 in group_vars/all.yml.

Tokens

Registration tokens are per-repo and expire ~1h after minting. Exported as env vars on the control node, named by each project's token_env in host_vars.

Mint each from the repo's Settings → Actions → Runners → Create new runner token, then run the playbook within the hour.

Run

cd deploy/ansible

# 1. Edit inventory.ini (set ansible_host / ansible_user) and host_vars/*.yml.
# 2. Fill in act_runner_version + act_runner_sha256 in group_vars/all.yml.
# 3. Export fresh tokens (leading space keeps them out of shell history):
 export RUNNER_TOKEN_GATEHOUSE_API=xxx
 export RUNNER_TOKEN_GATEHOUSE_UI=yyy

ansible-playbook --syntax-check install-runner.yml
ansible-playbook install-runner.yml --check --diff --limit stage   # dry run
ansible-playbook install-runner.yml --limit stage                  # apply

Verify

# on the host
systemctl list-units 'gitea-runner-*'
ls /home/gitea-runner/                # act-runner-gatehouse-api-1, ...

Each repo's Settings → Actions → Runners should list the runners as Idle with the expected labels. Idempotent: re-running skips already-registered runners (creates: .runner guards re-registration; binary download is checksum-gated).

Migrating from GitHub Actions runners

Stop and remove the old runners on any existing host before re-running:

sudo su - github-runner -c "cd ~/actions-runner-*/; ./svc.sh stop && ./svc.sh uninstall"
sudo userdel -r github-runner   # optional — removes home dir too

Notes

Bump act_runner_version + act_runner_sha256 together in group_vars/all.yml.
Labels in host_vars/<host>.yml must match the runs-on: values in workflow files.
deploy/deploy.sh needs the runner user to have passwordless sudo for nginx reload — add that sudoers drop-in separately (not yet automated here). Update the username from github-runner to gitea-runner in that drop-in.
prod01.ansible_host in inventory.ini is still CHANGE_ME — fill in before running prod.

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