Github Actions - Self-Hosted Runner

On User Permissions

Which user the Github Actions Workflow will use is dependent on which user the service install was ran as:

root@op-ghr-01:/home/github_runner# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
root@op-ghr-01:/home/github_runner# ./svc.sh install 
 
# The above will start it as root.

You can specify the user as a 2 argument. For example:

./svc.sh install github_runner
# The above command will use the user you've provided

Why Permissions matter?

When using a container inside the self-hosted runner, the file permissions are set based on the container. Thus if there is a miss-match between the runner and the container, permission errors are expected to happen.

So which user should I use?

A dedicated user with sudo passwordless permissions is advised. While you must give apt NOPASS permissions, others are not inherently required and it all depends on what actions you are using. Even making the dedicated user a passwordless sudoer is better than root.