actions / actions/runner

add support for workerBinary configuration

Open
#1,787 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement Runner Feature
Dominant language
C#
Stars
6.3k
Forks
1.4k
Avg merge
1d 16h
Merged PRs (30d)
24

Description

Describe the enhancement
With self-hosted runners all jobs usually have full access to the runner
directory. You can put the runner in a VM or container and use --once to
restart with a clean environment after each job but that doesn't prevent jobs
from doing either of the following:

  • access runner secrets like .credentials_rsaparams to then take over the
    runner
  • modify the listener to nuke --once and manipulate future jobs.

To fix that issue I'm running Runner.Listener in the host environment while
running Runner.Worker in a VM or container.
That is easily possible because the only way of communication between the two
are unnamed pipes which can easily be forwarded into another environment.

In my specific setup I set the config workerBinary to an absolute path outside
of the runner installation. That binary then starts a qemu VM, forwards the
pipes into it, places a copy of the runner installation into the VM and starts
Runner.Worker with the forwarded pipes as the arguments.

Additional information
https://github.com/actions/runner/pull/1122

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the Runner.Listener and Runner.Worker communication described in the issue, then read pull request #1122 for the proposed workerBinary behavior. Done means the runner supports configuring an absolute worker binary path so the listener can launch Runner.Worker externally while preserving the unnamed-pipe arguments.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
devops, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.