gitlab-ci-multi-runner breaks apt-get / dpkg if you are using NIS

If you are using NIS, you will not be able to create home directories inside /home as these are controlled by the NIS server.

Installing multirunner on a machine with NIS will break apt-get:

Setting up gitlab-ci-multi-runner (0.3.3) ...
useradd: cannot create directory /home/gitlab_ci_multi_runner
dpkg: error processing gitlab-ci-multi-runner (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 12
Errors were encountered while processing:
 gitlab-ci-multi-runner
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

@sbarnea Can you describe how to reproduce the issue? Maybe you have some idea how to fix it?

Milestone changed to v0.4.0

Added ~58730 label

How to reproduce: be sure that /home is not writable and try to install gitlab-ci-multi-runner -- at some stage it will try to setup the home directory to /home/gitlab_ci_multi_runner and obviously it will fail.

Is that standard setup on some systems?

@sbarnea any update?

Status changed to closed

I haven't received response. Closing for now.

@ayufan I saw this too when trying to install the DEB package. At our company /home is mounted on the network and is not writeable. To work around, I needed to manually create the user gitlab-runner and set its home directory to something local.

@lilbill39 Do you have a workaround? Maybe you could create a FAQ entry describing that problem and resolution?

@ayufan Yep the workaround is to simply create the user with a different home. Where's the FAQ? I can add one.

@lilbill39

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ci-multi-runner/blob/master/docs/faq/README.md

I'm hitting this issue, and I do not see a workaround on the FAQ. I tried glancing through manually and searching for "home" (only 1 match, and not related).

My IT organization has NIS home directories that I cannot create/modify, and when I tried to install using the Ubuntu PPA I get this after every package I install now...

...
Setting up gitlab-ci-multi-runner (9.1.1) ...
GitLab Runner: creating gitlab-runner...
useradd: cannot create directory /home/gitlab-runner
dpkg: error processing package gitlab-ci-multi-runner (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 12
...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 gitlab-ci-multi-runner
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I'm also affected by this issue. In this case the /home is mounted via NFS and users/groups are managed with LDAP.

Selecting previously unselected package gitlab-ci-multi-runner.
...
Preparing to unpack .../gitlab-ci-multi-runner_9.5.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking gitlab-ci-multi-runner (9.5.0) ...
Setting up gitlab-ci-multi-runner (9.5.0) ...
GitLab Runner: creating gitlab-runner...
useradd: cannot create directory /home/gitlab-runner
dpkg: error processing package gitlab-ci-multi-runner (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 12
Errors were encountered while processing:
 gitlab-ci-multi-runner
...
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Any suggestion?