Possible to pull github actions images?

[mathomp4]

All,

This might be a FAQ and my search-fu is failing me, but I couldn’t find it. Namely, sometimes I need to try and debug what’s happening in my GitHub Actions when they fail. Unlike CircleCI, I can’t ssh into the run, so my thought was “Can I pull the image locally and issue the action commands?”

That is, is it possible to docker pull github-actions/ubuntu-20.04 or whatever my yaml file is asking for and get the image that GitHub Actions uses?

Thanks,
Matt

[airtower-luna]

There is no official Docker image for that, because the GitHub runners are VMs. You should be able to find more about them here: GitHub - actions/virtual-environments: GitHub Actions virtual environments

There is a (non GitHub!) tool to run Actions locally using Docker, and there are some Docker images mentioned in its README. I haven’t used them, so I can’t say exactly how close to the VMs they are, but you can take a look here: GitHub - nektos/act: Run your GitHub Actions locally 🚀

[mathomp4]

Ohhh. I feel a bit dumb. I thought maybe I just didn’t know Docker speak well and it was just a GitHub-y way of talking about containers, etc. Explains why I couldn’t find anyone saying "just do docker pull ghcp.io/...

Maybe I should go find a “Please let us ssh in” issue and vote on that! :slight_smile:

[Simran-B]

You may also give this action a try to ssh into the virtual environment: Debugging with tmate · Actions · GitHub Marketplace · GitHub