Debugging gitlab job issues (was: Transition to VM based CI)

Thomas Friedrichsmeier <[email protected]> Fri, 5 Sep 2025 15:50:31 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.kde.devel.core
Message-ID	<20250905155012.5ab96cdb@booklife>

On Tue, 8 Jul 2025 06:49:29 +1200
Ben Cooksley <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> The VM images themselves are built using some rather simplistic
> scripting at invent.kde.org/sysadmin/ci-images.
> Once built they're published to storage.kde.org/vm-images/ - so yes
> you could definitely just download a CI VM image and start hacking
> right away.
> 
> There is tooling in sysadmin/ci-images (vm-runner folder) which
> automates the process of downloading an image, setting up the VM, etc
> and makes running a new one as easy as:
>     vm-runner run --cpu 4 --ram 4G --disk 100G --image
> storage.kde.org/vm-images/alpine-qt68 --mount ~/shared/ --ssh-keys
> ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub mynewvm

Trying to debug this build failure (while building vlc for appimage,
using craft): https://invent.kde.org/education/rkward/-/jobs/3323793 .
A similar job still running in a docker container succeeds
(https://invent.kde.org/packaging/craft-blueprints-kde/-/jobs/3317222),
so it seems to depend on some specifics of the system, and I was hoping
to diagnose the problem by downloading the VM image.

I started the "craft-appimage" image using the vm-runner script, as
shown, entered it as "user" via ssh, and bootstrapped craft inside of
it. To my surprise, building vlc in that setup does not show the same
error, however (it still fails, but at a slightly later point, and with
a different error that I do understand, and will be able to fix).

So I wonder:
1) What do I need to do to replicate an environment identical to the
one used on gitlab.

Also, while not at that point, yet:
2) Can I modify the image, interactively, specifically, by installing
some stuff with root privileges? Or will I have to rebuild the image
from scratch, for that?

Thanks!

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