Auto Upgrade On Prem Runners

Question

Hi, We are running windows runners on prem. Since new versions come out frequently we are investigating maybe scripting auto installing the latest runner. I looked through the API to see if there were anything there I could use but didn't find anything.  We have the script to do the actual download and install but for complete automation we are missing a few steps:

* Know there is a new version available (parse the log of the latest run? not ideal)
* Get the version # of the latest version (parse the log of the latest run? not ideal)
* Know if the runner is actively "running" or is idle (parse log of latest run? nasty)
* Request runner to shut down cleanly (Maybe OS soft kill flag instead of hard kill)

Anyone know of any ways to accomplish the above (other than all the freaking log parsing)?

Thanks.

Theodora Boudale · Answer

Hi Michael and welcome to the community.

I'm afraid that we don't have any API endpoints to get this information.

We have feature requests for providing API endpoints for runners and also for providing auto-update options:

* https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-21309
* https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-22032

I would suggest adding your vote to these feature requests (by selecting the Vote for this issue link) to express your interest. You can also add yourself as a watcher (by selecting the Start watching this issue link) if you'd like to get notified via email on updates. Implementation of features is done as per our policy here and any updates will be posted in the feature requests.

In the meantime, parsing the logs would be the way to get this info programmatically.

Kind regards,
Theodora

Marc-A _Nimbax_ · Answer

If you really want to go that route maybe using a docker to implement jira could be a nice solution

I do it in a dev env using docker-compose

Using the 
atlassian/jira-software:latest docker image.

It's been a long time but here is the doc on how we did it.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automatically-update-docker-container-images-with-watchtower-on-ubuntu-22-04

(container is ubuntu but replace with jira container and it's the same logic )