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Bound the runner's containers and keep its disk free

4e3759da08a603ede50107e89a23ff6d5432b7ac · Keenan Nemetz · 6h ago · parent c4ad0d5a

Bound the runner's containers and keep its disk free

The container boundary was good and the resource the job consumes was not. A job
could fork without a bound, write /tmp until the machine's RAM was gone, and fill
the disk its workspace sits on — and the runner would only notice when a build
died. The isolation protects the forge's data; this protects the machine that runs
the code.

- `--container-pids` now defaults to 2048 and zero means the default, not "no
  limit": a bound nobody set is the easiest one to be missing, and a job that can
  fork without one is a fork bomb away from taking the machine.
- `--container-tmpfs` is new and defaults to 1G. /tmp is a tmpfs, so its size is
  memory, and an unsized one is a build that fills RAM without writing a byte to
  the workspace. It is passed to service containers too.
- `--container-memory` stays the operator's setting rather than a default, because
  the right number is the machine's size and a wrong default would show up as an
  OOM kill in someone's build. All three places a runner is configured now set it:
  the packaged runner.env example, the manual steps in the deploy guide, and the
  cloud-init template (RUNNER_MEMORY, default 4G, alongside RUNNER_PIDS,
  RUNNER_TMPFS and RUNNER_DISK_RESERVE).
- `--disk-reserve` (default 2G) is how the job tree is bounded. It is a host bind
  mount, so the runtime cannot quota it and a filesystem quota needs root; a walker
  over the tree would cost more than it protects. What the runner can promise is
  that it notices: one statfs per second while a command runs, and the job is
  stopped below the reserve with the numbers in its log. `--dir` on its own sized
  filesystem is the hard bound, and the docs say so.
- The runner unit gets `MemoryMax=90%` as the backstop under all of it, for a job
  that gets past its own cgroup. It is a percentage so the unit does not have to
  know the machine. TasksMax is deliberately not set: the container's own
  --container-pids already applies, and a unit value would have to track --jobs and
  --container-pids and would fail builds, looking like the workflow's fault, when
  they drifted apart.

A workflow still cannot raise or remove any of this: the limits are flags on the
runner and the unit, never fields a job can set.

scripts/check-deploy.py now fails when the rendered runner arguments stop carrying
the memory, pids, tmpfs or disk limits, so the first-boot file cannot quietly lose
them.

Closes 01M6S798BH0BK00R2B5N1KDJYM

packaging/systemd/vole-runner.service +10

@@ -38,6 +38,16 @@ TimeoutStopSec=60s
38 38 # service's own cgroup is delegated to it.
39 39 Delegate=yes
40 40
41 # The backstop under the container limits. Each job gets --container-memory, and this
42 # bounds the whole runner including every job in flight, for the case where a job gets
43 # past its own cgroup: a percentage is of the machine, so the unit does not have to
44 # know how big it is. Size --jobs times --container-memory below it, and leave the rest
45 # for the kernel and the runtime's own storage. TasksMax is deliberately not set: the
46 # container's own --container-pids already applies to everything the runner starts,
47 # and a unit-level value would have to track --jobs and --container-pids, failing
48 # builds in a way that looks like the workflow's fault when it drifts.
49 MemoryMax=90%
50
41 51 # A core dump of this process is a copy of the runner's SSH key, which leases jobs
42 52 # and reports their results.
43 53 LimitCORE=0