GitLab Runner with Docker-in-Docker (DinD) Setup

This repository contains a docker-compose configuration for setting up a GitLab Runner with Docker-in-Docker (DinD). This allows for CI/CD pipelines that need to build, run, and manage Docker containers within GitLab CI.

Prerequisites

• Docker installed on your host machine
• Docker Compose installed on your host machine
• GitLab account with access to a GitLab instance

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-repo.git
cd your-repo

2. Configure environment variables:

Create a .env file in the root of the repository and populate it with the following variables:

CI_SERVER_URL=https://gitlab.example.com/  # Replace with your GitLab instance URL
REGISTRATION_TOKEN=your_registration_token  # Replace with your GitLab Runner registration token
RUNNER_NAME=your_runner_name  # Replace with your desired runner name

3. Start the services:

docker-compose up -d

Services

• dind: Docker-in-Docker service to provide Docker daemon capabilities inside a container.
• runner: GitLab Runner service configured to use the DinD service for Docker operations.
• register-runner: One-time service to register the GitLab Runner with the GitLab instance.

Usage

After starting the services with docker-compose up -d, the GitLab Runner will be registered and ready to pick up jobs from your GitLab CI pipelines. Ensure your GitLab CI/CD configuration (.gitlab-ci.yml) is set up to use the runner for executing jobs.

Example GitLab CI Configuration

Here is an example .gitlab-ci.yml file that installs Docker Compose before running a script:

stages:
  - build

build:
  stage: build
  services:
    # Define the Docker-in-Docker service to enable Docker commands within the job.
    - name: docker:dind
  before_script:
    # Install pip, the package installer for Python
    - apk add --no-cache py3-pip
    # Install Docker Compose using pip
    - pip install docker-compose
    # Verify Docker Compose installation
    - docker-compose --version
  script:
    # Start services defined in the docker-compose.yml file in detached mode
    - docker-compose up -d
    # Run a specific service defined in the docker-compose.yml file
    - docker-compose run your-service-name
    # Shut down all services defined in the docker-compose.yml file
    - docker-compose down

Note: Installing Docker Compose is crucial for managing multi-container Docker applications and running the services defined in the .gitlab-ci.yml file example.

Stopping the Services

To stop the services, run:

docker-compose down

This will stop and remove all the containers defined in the docker-compose.yml file.