How do I delete/unregister a GitLab runner

Question

I have registered a personal GitLab runner several months ago, which I no longer use. How do I completely delete it so that it does not show up on my GitLab CI/CD settings page?

Answer 1

Get your runner token and id

First, go to the GitLab settings page and find the token (e.g. 250cff81 in the image below) and the id (e.g. 354472 in the image below) of the GitLab runner which you wish to delete.

Use the gitlab-runner CLI to unregister the runner

If you have access to the machine which was used to register the GitLab runner, you can unregister the runner using the following command, where you replace {TOKEN} with the token of your GitLab runner (e.g. 250cff81 in the example above).

gitlab-runner unregister --url https://gitlab.org/ --token {TOKEN}

Use the GitLab API to unregister the runner

If you no longer have access to the machine which was used to register the runner, or if the runner is associated with multiple projects, you can use the following Python script. Set RUNNER_ID to the id of your runner (e.g. 354472 in the example above) and GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN to a GitLab token which you can generate from your profile page.

import os
import requests

GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN = ...
RUNNER_ID = ...

headers = {"PRIVATE-TOKEN": GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN}

r = requests.get(f"https://gitlab.com/api/v4/runners/{RUNNER_ID}", headers=headers)
runner_data = r.json()

for project in runner_data.get("projects", []):
    r = requests.delete(
        f"https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/{project['id']}/runners/{RUNNER_ID}",
        headers=headers,
    )
    if not r.ok:
        print("Encountered an error deleting runner from project:", r.json())

r = requests.delete(f"https://gitlab.com/api/v4/runners/{RUNNER_ID}", headers=headers)
if not r.ok:
    print("Encountered an error deleting runner:", r.json())

Answer 2

1. List runners to get their tokens and URLs:

   sudo gitlab-runner list
   

2. Verify with delete option specifying runner's token and URL:

   sudo gitlab-runner verify --delete -t YMsSCHnjGssdmz1JRoxx -u http://git.xxxx.com/
   

Answer 3

Here's one-liner to remove offline runners (for GitLab 14.5):

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <private_token>" "https://<your-instance-address>/api/v4/runners/all?scope=offline&per_page=100" | jq '.[].id' | xargs -I runner_id curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <private_token>" "https://<your-instance-address>/api/v4/runners/runner_id"

You might run this more than once if you have more than 100 offline runners (per_page=100).