How to set up a Gitlab-runner using VirtualBox executor

Question

I'm trying to set up a Gitlab specific runner using VirtualBox as an executor.

I'm using macOS 10.15.5 and here's what I did:

• Run gitlab-runner register and use URL and token shown in Settings -> CI/CD
• Choose virtualbox for executor
• Run gitlab-runner start

Then I can see the activated Runner in Settings -> CI/CD in my Gitlab project.

But if I commit the .gitlab-ci.yml file, the runner pipeline fails with the following error:

Preparing the "virtualbox" executor
ERROR: Job failed (system failure): exec: "vboxmanage": executable file not found in $PATH

I tried everything to fix this based on Google search (especially tried everything from https://github.com/docker/machine/issues/4590), but could not fix this.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Assuming your are talking about a local GitLab server, the first step would be to search for a vboxmanage (of any case) on your system.

The second step would be to troubleshoot the GitLab Runner, making sure its PATH includes vboxmanage