Setup self-hosted GitHub runner

With self-hosted runners, you can create custom hardware configurations that meet your needs with processing power or memory to run larger jobs, install software available on your local network, and choose an operating system not offered by GitHub-hosted runners. — GitHub (opens in a new tab)

References

• GitHub Actions documentation (opens in a new tab)
• Self-hosted runners (opens in a new tab)

1. Go to your repository in GitHub.

2. In Settings > Actions > Runners, click on New self-hosted runner button.

3. Choose Runner Image and Architecture. Do take note that, the architecture is based on your device specifications. For my case is x64.

4. Download the necessary files. You can find all these commands on the same page where you select Runner Image and Architecture.

   Windows Runner

   # Create a folder under the drive root
   mkdir actions-runner; cd actions-runner
    
   # Download the latest runner installer file
   Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://github.com/actions/runner/releases/download/v2.311.0/actions-runner-win-x64-2.311.0.zip -OutFile actions-runner-win-x64-2.311.0.zip
    
   # Extract the installer
   Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem ; [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory("$PWD/actions-runner-win-x64-2.311.0.zip", "$PWD")
   Linux Runner

   # Create a folderr under drive root
   mkdir actions-runner && cd actions-runner
    
   # Download the latest runner installer file
   curl -o actions-runner-linux-x64-2.311.0.tar.gz -L https://github.com/actions/runner/releases/download/v2.311.0/actions-runner-linux-x64-2.311.0.tar.gz
    
   # Extract the installer
   tar xzf ./actions-runner-linux-x64-2.311.0.tar.gz

   Here is the output after executing all these commands.

5. Configure and start the runner.

   Windows Runner

   # Configure the runner
   ./config.cmd --url <github-repo-url> --token <token> --labels <lists-of-label>
    
   # Start the runner
   ./run.cmd
   Linux Runner

   # Configure the runner
   ./config.sh --url <github-repo-url> --token <token> --labels <lists-of-label>
    
   # Start the runner
   ./run.sh

   Programmatically assign labels (opens in a new tab) to a self-hosted runner is optional. Here is the sample configuration of the runner.

   

   Verify your runner being setup.

6. Using your self-hosted runner. Create a new file under .github/workflows/test.yaml.

   name: Test runner
   on:
      push:
   jobs:
      build:
         runs-on: ["self-hosted"]
         steps:
         - name: Checkout repository
            uses: actions/checkout@v4
         - name: list directory
            run: ls

   Here is the output after all the CI jobs are completed.

7. Optional: You can configure the self-hosted runner application as a service (opens in a new tab)