Honeypot.net

diy

May 15, 2025 ∞

Forgejo Runner in rootless Podman on Debian

I wanted to experiment with Forgejo’s Actions as a DIY alternative to GitHub Actions, using a nearby Raspberry Pi as a build server. I also wanted to deviate slightly from their Runner installation process by executing the Runner and rootless Podman as a regular, non-privileged user and without using the system-level systemctl. It was pretty easy once I wrapped my head around it.

1. Set up the runner user. Since I was using Podman, not Docker, I didn’t have to add it to the docker group. As root:

root# useradd --create-home forgejo-runner

This created user number 1001 on my system. Remember that number later when it’s time to configure systemd.

2. Allow that user to run commands via systemctl without logging in and launching them manually:

root# loginctl enable-linger forgejo-runner

3. Use machinectl instead of su to become the forgejo-runner user. Without this, most systemd commands will fail with the Failed to connect to bus: No medium found message. I’m certain there’s a way to get su or sudo to play nicely with dbus but I had more interesting problems to solve today than this.

root# apt install systemd-container
root# machinectl shell forgejo-runner@

4. Run podman-system-service as the forgejo-runner user:

$ systemctl --user enable podman.socket
$ systemctl --user start podman.socket

5. Run the forgejo-runner program as the forgejo-runner user. I lightly modified the standard forgejo-runner.service file:

$ cat > .config/systemd/user/forgejo-runner.service <<EOHD
[Unit]
Description=Forgejo Runner
Documentation=https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/admin/actions/
After=podman.socket

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/forgejo-runner daemon
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID
# 1001 is the forgejo-runner user's UID
Environment="DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/user/1001/podman/podman.sock"

# This user and working directory must already exist
WorkingDirectory=/home/forgejo-runner
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutSec=0
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOHD
$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
$ systemctl --user enable forgejo-runner.service
$ systemctl --user start forgejo-runner.service

I rebooted my RPi to make sure it would start on its own and it did. Yay! Now I can run Forgejo Actions on my little server and everything works as documented.

Nov 8, 2023 ∞

Fixing the Casper Glow Light charger

Our Casper Glow Lights are nice. However, their charging bases are poorly made, and as seen in user reviews, they often break in a specific way. Inevitably, one or both of the little spring-loaded charging pins will permanently stick in the lowered position so that they don’t contact the charging elements on the light.



In this photo, the outer pin on the left sticks up a little above the charger’s base. When the light sits on this charger, that pin touches one of the light’s charging rings. The inner pin on the right is flush with the surface and doesn’t touch its corresponding charging ring.

That’s easy to fix. Rather than disassemble the base and try to mechanically repair the pin, I added a tiny glob of solder to the top of the pin. Then I used an emery board and trial and error to smooth it to a good height.



Ta-da! Now the Glow Light is charging away on the resuscitated charger.



After cleaning, the charger looks and acts like new, and I bet that cheap little solder glob will outlast the original spring mechanism.

Feb 20, 2021 ∞

Use local Git repos for personal work

I’ve heard a lot of online arguments about whether you should host your Git-based projects in GitHub or GitLab, but a lot of them miss an obvious option. Is this repo for your own personal work that you don’t intend to share with others? Great! You can host unlimited, free, completely private repositories on your own system. Here’s the complete process:

$ mkdir -p ~/src/myproject
$ cd ~/src/myproject
$ git init --bare
$ cd ~
$ git clone ~/src/myproject
$ cd myproject

There, you’re done. Now you have a 100% fully functional Git repo that doesn’t require a network connection and supports every single Git feature. Pull it, push it, branch it, revert it, whatever: it’s your own repo and you can do whatever you want with it. And you don’t have to sign up for anything, or agree to a Terms of Service, or share your work, or trust a company you don’t know very well.

If you want to move your repo to another server later, you can copy ~/src/myproject to its new home via whatever means you find most convenient, use git remote set-url origin [...] to point your existing work toward the new location, and then go on about your business as usual without changing any of your workflow.

GitHub and GitLab have a lot of nice features that may be totally irrelevant if you’re not collaborating with a team. Never forget that you can host Git projects yourself, easily and for free.

Oh, and if you do find yourself needing to work with a handful of people and don’t need all of the integration features of the commercial options, I highly recommend Gitea. It’s a tiny little service you can host yourself and it takes very few resources. I use it whenever I need my Git repo to be accessible across the Internet.