actions / actions/runner

Two self-hosted runners incorrectly run the same job

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#3,010 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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

Description

Describe the bug
If you launch a multiple of workflows that run on selfhosted runners, sometimes, two runners will run the same job. What this means is that if we have self hosted Runner A and Runner B and Workflow A and Workflow B, Runner A and Runner B will both run Workflow A leaving no runners to run Workflow B.

The GHA UI only shows the output from one of the runners, if looking at the logs on the other runner, we can see it is also running Workflow A and Workflow B remains queued.

To Reproduce
This doesn't happen all the time, but it definitely happens at least once every ~50 attempts
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Launch multiple workflows that run on self hosted runners
  2. Watch two self hosted runners pick up and run the same workflow.

Expected behavior
Only one runner picks up one workflow.

Runner Version and Platform

Version of your runner?
v2.311.0

OS of the machine running the runner? OSX/Windows/Linux/...
Linux x86_64

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 reproducing the race with multiple workflows on self-hosted runners, using runner version v2.311.0 on Linux x86_64. Compare the GitHub Actions UI with logs from both runners when the duplication occurs. Done means each workflow is picked up by only one runner and other queued workflows remain available for another runner.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp, github-actions
Domain
ci-cd
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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