Login to GH hosted runner via SSH

[gucio321]

Hi there!
Since debugging failed workflows is a bit painful, is it possible, to add possibility to log in into the failed workflow's runner? There is already such a feature implemented in CircleCI.

[gleatherman]

take a look at tmate

[dfuentes77]

There really should be a secure and officially supported way to get ssh access to builds.

I've done this many years ago with CircleCI... and today it's immensely beneficial now while using Concourse CI and their intercept feature, which drops you right into any container in the build task or pipeline.

I was shocked to learn that this is not already a standard feature in Github Actions.

In my experience, it significantly reduces the time needed when troubleshooting many build issues.

[kmcquade]

+1 on tmate. Here's some copypasta in case this is useful to someone.

We use @mxschmitt's tmate action with a conditional so that it only runs if the workflow fails on workflow_dispatch (that way tmate sessions don't kick off on PR syncs) and if tmate_debug is set to true in the input. This avoids unintentional run-offs but allows us to shell into failed workflows.

      - name: tmate session if tests fail
        uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3
        if: failure() && github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && inputs.tmate_debug

You can slice the inputs.tmate_debug if you want. If you want to keep it, you'll have to include it at the inputs at the top of your workflow file:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
      tmate_debug:
        description: whether to start a tmate SSH session if tests fail
        required: false
        type: boolean
        default: false

Hope this helps someone!