[tor-project] TPA-RFC-58: Podman CI runner deployment, help needed

[Antoine Beaupré]

On 2023-08-16 13:32:17, Antoine Beaupré wrote:

[...]

> ## Testers needed
>
> I need help testing the new runner. Right now it's marked as not
> running "untagged jobs", so it's unlikely to pick your CI jobs and run
> them. It would be great if people could test the new runner. 
>
> See the [GitLab tag documentation][] for how to add tags to your
> configuration. It's basically done by adding a `tags` field to the
> `.gitlab-ci.yml` file.
>
> Note that in TPA's [ci-test gitlab-ci.yaml file][], we use a
> `TPA_TAG_VALUE` variable to be able to pass arbitrary tags down into
> the jobs without having to constantly change the .yaml file, which
> might be a useful addition to your workflow.
>
> The tag to use is `podman`.
>
> You can send any job you want to the `podman` runner, but we'd like to
> test a broad variety of things before we put it in production, but
> especially image buildings. Upstream even has a [set of instructions
> to build packages inside podman][].
>
> [ci-test gitlab-ci.yaml file]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/ci-test/-/blob/main/.gitlab-ci.yml
> [GitLab tag documentation]: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#tags
> [set of instructions to build packages inside podman]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/executors/docker.html#use-podman-to-build-container-images-from-a-dockerfile

Update on this: I added the `tpa` tag earlier this week so that the
runner would pick up our nightly test jobs. Today I've also added the
`amd64` tag to unblock a test pipeline nickm gracefully sent our
way.

I'm happy to announce that both tests are doing well and we're on track
to enabling the runner to run all jobs normally this coming Wednesday.

Also note that I did an extensive amount of work on the GitLab CI
dashboard, which now also features queue wait times:

https://grafana.torproject.org/d/fd0b2fb2-88d0-4f85-bc86-16164c083b51/gitlab-ci-overview

user: tor-guest, no password, as usual.

That should allow you to answer the question of "is it just me or CI is
taking forever to pick up my job". For the last two days we had those
stats, all jobs get picked up within one minute of being queued.

Feedback is, as usual, welcome, either here or:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41296

Thank you for your attention!

a.

-- 
Antoine Beaupré
torproject.org system administration