Runner tokens & authentication

Runners reach out to Gitlab and periodically check in to see if they have any jobs assigned to them. In order to communicate with Gitlab they need to have a valid authentication token - a shared secret between the runner and the Gitlab server that ensures the runner is trusted.

Sensitive information like authentication tokens are managed in kubernetes with the use of secrets. We are going to generate a new runner token and save this token in a kubernetes secret.

Configuring Gitlab

Let’s start by generating a new runner token. This token will register a worker with our project, as a result it will only be tasked with running our build jobs.

First we’ll browse to CI/CD settings

Then we’ll copy our runner registration token

Creating our secret

Now we’ll go back to our kubernetes terminal and create our secret. Run the command below to create your secret