SGCRUN - GitHub Self-Hosted Containerized Runner Script

This script launches a temporary self-hosted GitHub Actions runner inside a Docker container using summerwind/actions-runner-dind. It is useful for CI/CD workflows that require ephemeral, containerized runners for GitHub organizations.

Requirements

• Bash
• Docker
• GitHub personal access token for registering runners
• The following CLI tools installed and in your $PATH:
  basename, realpath, date, echo, whoami, openssl, curl, jq

Usage

export SGCRUN_GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_..."

/bin/bash sgcrun.sh my-org-name

🧩 Arguments

• <github-organization>
  Required. The GitHub organization where the runner will be registered.

📦 Environment Variables

Required:

• SGCRUN_GITHUB_TOKEN
  GitHub personal access token with permission to register runners for the organization.

Optional:

• SGCRUN_LOG
  Absolute or relative path to a writable log file. If set and the file exists, script output will be appended to it.

📝 Logging

You may enable logging by creating a log file and exporting the SGCRUN_LOG environment variable:

touch /tmp/sgcrun.log

export SGCRUN_LOG="/tmp/sgcrun.log"

/bin/bash sgcrun.sh my-org-name

All output, including errors, will be written to this file as well as shown in the terminal.

🧪 Troubleshooting

• Make sure Docker is running and you have permissions to run docker commands.
• The script will exit early if required tools are not available.
• If the GitHub token is invalid or lacks permission, the registration will fail.

⚠️ Warning:

The container will be executed with the --privileged flag to support Docker-in-Docker (DinD) functionality. This grants the container extended permissions, which may pose a security risk if used in untrusted environments.
Use with caution.

License

MIT License © 2025