Cannot automate Gitea Actions runner registration - CLI generated tokens not recognized

[cmxela]

Description

I'm trying to automate the deployment of Gitea Actions runners in a Kubernetes environment, but I'm encountering an issue where tokens generated via the CLI command are not recognized by the runner.

Current Behavior

1. Running gitea actions generate-runner-token successfully generates a token
2. When the act_runner tries to use this token, it fails with: runner registration token not found
3. The documentation states that registration tokens should be obtained from the web UI at /admin/actions/runners

Expected Behavior

The CLI-generated token should work for runner registration, enabling fully automated deployments without manual web UI interaction.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Deploy Gitea 1.22.3 with Actions enabled:

[actions]
ENABLED = true
DEFAULT_ACTIONS_URL = https://gitea.com

2. Generate a runner token via CLI:

gitea --config /data/gitea/conf/app.ini actions generate-runner-token

3. Try to register a runner with the generated token:

act_runner register --no-interactive --instance https://git.example.com --token <generated-token> --name runner-1

4. Runner fails with: runner registration token not found

Environment

• Gitea Version: 1.22.3
• act_runner Version: 0.2.11
• Deployment: Kubernetes (MicroK8s)
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04

Use Case

This is blocking automated CI/CD deployments where runners need to be provisioned without manual intervention. In Kubernetes environments, it's common to deploy all components via manifests/operators without requiring manual web UI steps.

Possible Solutions

1. Make CLI-generated tokens work with runner registration
2. Add an API endpoint to retrieve registration tokens (similar to Add API endpoint to get token for registering runners for repos #23761 but for instance-level runners)
3. Document how to retrieve the registration token programmatically for automation scenarios

Related Issues

• Add API endpoint to get token for registering runners for repos #23761 (Added API for repo-level runner tokens, but not for instance-level)
• Gitea Actions (Act Runner) REST API #26370 (Gitea Actions REST API proposal)

[ChristopherHX]

I was able to use actions generate-runner-token in an automated setup script in Gitea 1.24 in about 90% of setups, in the other 10% the cli tool returned an error instead of a token that might needs automated retries to eliminate.

Possible Solutions

• Upgrade to Gitea 1.23

2. Add an API endpoint to retrieve registration tokens (similar to Add API endpoint to get token for registering runners for repos #23761 but for instance-level runners)

Exists in 1.23 (GET /admin/runners/registration-token) and 1.24 (POST /admin/actions/runners/registration-token)

See also https://gitea.com/api/swagger#/admin/adminCreateRunnerRegistrationToken (Gitea.com may expose apis that are only part of Gitea nightly, so use your own instance swagger to be sure)

No I didn't target Gitea 1.22 in my independent automation tests, since this is way too old

[wxiaoguang]

Please upgrade to 1.24 and try again. 1.22 is an outdated & unsupported version

[cmxela]

Thanks, upgrading worked