How can I tell the ec2 instance to switch to a non-root user via this runner?

All examples I have seen use a docker image, which has a user parameter.

But I’m not using docker. How do I then tell the action-runner to run as non-root (ubuntu in this case)

I tried many different ways, but no matter what I do the current user remains root

      - name: Who Am I?
        run: |
          sudo su - ubuntu
          whoami
      - name: Who Am I?
        run: |
          sudo -u ubuntu bash
          whoami
      - name: Who Am I?
        shell: bash -l {0}
        run: |
          su - ubuntu
          whoami

I can’t find anything on the EC2 side that will let me change the default user. When I connect via ssh it gives the root@ip address.

I have everything already installed/configured under ubuntu.

If this is not the right place to ask if you know where I can find this info please let me know as I have spent many hours searching and can’t find any information.

Thank you!

[jpalomaki]

While EC2 user data script is run as root, it is possible to use a non-root user if actions-runner is installed as a service (using the svc.sh script). See e.g. https://github.com/philips-labs/terraform-aws-github-runner/blob/develop/modules/runners/templates/install-config-runner.sh#L33

[jpalomaki]

Thank you!

While EC2 user data script is run as root, it is possible to use a non-root user if actions-runner is installed as a service (using the svc.sh script)

Could ec2-github-runner support this?

I think it could, especially now with the newly-added runner-home-dir option (said pre-baked directory could be owned by that non-root user, so file permissions probably would not cause issues).

@machulav what do you think?