Run a test build¶

Now that you've registered your GitHub organisation, created a server, and configured the agent, you're ready for a test build.

We recommend you run the following build without changes to confirm that everything is working as expected. After that, you can modify an existing build and start using actuated for your team.

The below steps should take less than 10 minutes.

Create a repository and workflow¶

This build will show you the specs, OS and Kernel name reported by the MicroVM.

Note that if you're running on an Arm server, You'll adapt the prefix of runs-on: actuated-, to runs-on: actuated-arm64- instead.

Create a test repository and a GitHub Action

Create ./.github/workflows/ci.yaml:

name: CI

on:
    pull_request:
        branches:
        - '*'
    push:
        branches:
        - master
        - main
    workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
    specs:
        name: specs
        # runs-on: actuated-arm64-2cpu-8gb
        runs-on: actuated-arm64-2cpu-8gb
        steps:
        - uses: actions/checkout@v1
        - name: Check specs
          run: |
            ./specs.sh

Note that the runs-on: field says actuated- and not ubuntu-latest. This is how the actuated control plane knows to send this job to your agent. There are no fixed sets of vCPU and RAM, you can make up your own combinations.

Then add specs.sh to the root of the repository, and remember, that you must run chmod +x specs.sh afterwards to make it executable.

#!/bin/bash

echo Information on main disk
df -h /

echo Memory info
free -h

echo Total CPUs:
echo CPUs: $(nproc)

echo CPU Model
cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -i "Model"|head -n 2

echo Kernel and OS info
uname -a

echo Generally, KVM should not be available unless specifically enabled
if ! [ -e /dev/kvm ]; then
    echo "/dev/kvm does not exist"
else
    echo "/dev/kvm exists"
fi

echo OS
cat /etc/os-release

echo Egress IP:
curl -s -L -S https://checkip.amazonaws.com

echo Speed test of Internet
sudo pip install speedtest-cli
speedtest-cli

echo Checking Docker
docker run alpine:latest cat /etc/os-release

Don't leave out this step!

chmod +x ./specs.sh

Hit commit, and watch the VM boot up.

You'll be able to see the runners registered for your organisation on the Actuated Dashboard along with the build queue and stats for the current day's builds.
If you're curious

You can view the logs of the agent by logging into one of the Actuated Servers with SSH and running the following commands:
```
sudo journalctl -u actuated -f -o cat

# Just today's logs:
sudo journalctl -u actuated --since today -o cat
```
And each VM writes the logs from its console and the GitHub Actions Runner to /var/log/actuated/.
```
sudo cat /var/log/actuated/*
```

Do you have any questions or comments? Feel free to reach out to us over Slack in the #onboarding channel.

Enable actuated for an existing repository¶

To add actuated to an existing repository, simply edit the workflow YAML file and change runs-on: to runs-on: actuated-4cpu-16gb and for Arm builds, change it to: runs-on: actuated-arm64-4cpu-16gb. The values for CPU and RAM can be customised to your needs, and there are no hard-coded, or fixed combinations, to allow for flexibility.

Learn more in Custom VM Sizes

Recommended: Enable a Docker Hub mirror¶

Do you use the Docker Hub in your builds? Any Dockerfile with a FROM that doesn't include a server name will be pulled from docker.io, and there are strict rate-limits for unauthenticated users.

Option 1 - authenticate

Run docker login or use the Docker Login Action just before you run Docker build or pull down any images with tooling like KinD
Option 2 - use a cache/mirror

Use our guide to Set up a registry cache and mirror - this uses less bandwidth and increases the speed of builds where images are already present in the cache.