How do I enable cloning over SSH for a Gitlab runner?

Question

I am having some trouble cloning large repositories over HTTP on my Windows Gitlab runner. I\'ve tried several methods to do shallow clones or disable clone compression. Sti

Answer 1

As a newcomer to gitlab, I've managed to hack a workaround to this issue as I also haven't found a built-in way to change the default cloning process (although here is a recent comment about how it can be done).

By disabling the automatic cloning process, you can effectively override its behavior completely by simply writing your own cloning process in a before_script. Only for the purposes of example does the below show how to accomplish this for HTTP cloning but could be adapted for ssh cloning (if you're trying to use HTTP cloning you should use the built-in cloning process and the config.toml):

1. Create a new user called "gitlab-runner" and generate their user auth token for later use (or in your case, you would generate ssh keys).

2. Disable cloning process for runner by adding the following variable in either your project or group settings: .../settings/ci_cd

   key: GIT_STRATEGY

   value: none

3. Clone your repo in a before_script such as:

before_script:
  ## clean the working directory
  - BUILD_DIR=/home/gitlab-runner/builds/$RUNNER_TOKEN/0
  - CLONE_DIR="$BUILD_DIR/$CI_PROJECT_PATH"
  - cd $BUILD_DIR
  - rm -rf $CLONE_DIR
  - mkdir -p $CLONE_DIR

  ## clone the project each time (inefficient, consider performing fetch instead if it already exists)
  - git clone http://gitlab-runner:$GITLABRUNNER_USER_AUTH_TOKEN@server:8888/${CI_PROJECT_PATH}.git $CLONE_DIR
  - cd $CLONE_DIR

Note: Here are the relevant variables I also configured in step 2 rather than hard coding them in the script:

• RUNNER_TOKEN: "Runner Token" value listed in the Admin "Runners" menu for the particular runner you are trying to run.
• GITLABRUNNER_USER_AUTH_TOKEN: This is the auth token you generated in step 1.