• Use the SSH executor
• Configure strict host key checking

SSH

This is a simple executor that allows you to execute builds on a remote machine by executing commands over SSH.

Use the SSH executor

To use the SSH executor, specify executor = "ssh" in the [runners.ssh] section. For example:

[[runners]]
  executor = "ssh"
  [runners.ssh]
    host = "example.com"
    port = "22"
    user = "root"
    password = "password"
    identity_file = "/path/to/identity/file"

You can use password or identity_file or both to authenticate against the server. GitLab Runner doesn’t implicitly read identity_file from /home/user/.ssh/id_(rsa|dsa|ecdsa). The identity_file needs to be explicitly specified.

The project’s source is checked out to: ~/builds/<short-token>/<concurrent-id>/<namespace>/<project-name>.

Where:

• <short-token> is a shortened version of the runner’s token (first 8 letters)
• <concurrent-id> is a unique number, identifying the local job ID on the particular runner in context of the project
• <namespace> is the namespace where the project is stored on GitLab
• <project-name> is the name of the project as it is stored on GitLab

To overwrite the ~/builds directory, specify the builds_dir options under [[runners]] section in config.toml.

If you want to upload job artifacts, install gitlab-runner on the host you are connecting to via SSH.

Configure strict host key checking

To enable SSH StrictHostKeyChecking, make sure the [runners.ssh.disable_strict_host_key_checking] is set to false. The current default is true.

In GitLab 15.0 and later, the default value is false, meaning host key checking is required.