Re: CI Outages

And a big thank you! to all involved in solving the problem and maintaining=
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the infrastructure!

Br,
  K=C3=A5re


On Saturday, 2 May 2026 21:56:10 EEST Ben Cooksley wrote:
> Hi all,
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> I'm happy to announce that final repairs on both Windows and FreeBSD were
> completed yesterday and those builds are now fully functional again which
> completes the restoration of normal CI service.
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> Please let us know if you see any unusual failures.
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> Many thanks,
> Ben
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> On Fri, May 1, 2026 at 10:02=E2=80=AFPM Ben Cooksley <[email protected]> =
wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >=20
> > Over the past 48 hours or so we've had a series of two unfortunate
> > incidents that have significantly degraded the CI system.
> >=20
> > The first part of this took place approximately 36 hours ago, when an
> > admin, in response to the announcement of the https://copy.fail/ Linux
> > kernel exploit, installed updates on one or more of our VM Runners. The
> > unfortunate side effect of this is that it also installed updates for
> > gitlab-runner and upgraded it to a newer version. As part of it's work,
> > Gitlab Runner requires the assistance of a helper binary within the VM,
> > and
> > this helper should ideally be the same version as is deployed on the VM
> > runner hosts, or at the very least be a newer version.
> >=20
> > In the case of this update, there were incompatible changes as part of
> > changes to how artifacts are captured, which is why we are seeing
> > breakages
> > related to an unrecognised timeout parameter which is causing a complete
> > fatal failure of the CI jobs.
> >=20
> > The images that support the majority of our CI builds (Linux - Qt 6.11,=
 Qt
> > 6.12 and Qt 5.15, Android, Flatpak, Snap and Appimages) have been rebui=
lt
> > to include the newer Gitlab Runner helper and those builds should now be
> > functional again.
> > Custom VM images utilised by Yocto, Buildstream, Neon and KDE Linux have
> > also been rebuilt and should also be functional again.
> >=20
> > Windows builds require a replacement base image as the Gitlab Runner
> > helper is burned into the base image - and that is in the process of be=
ing
> > uploaded currently.
> > Once uploaded, i'll rebuild the image that supports both general Windows
> > CI and Craft builds which will restore those builds to working order as
> > well.
> >=20
> > For FreeBSD, we will need our custom package repository updated to incl=
ude
> > the newer Gitlab Runner helper.
> > This has been requested and should be completed in the next few days so
> > those builds will remain broken for a bit longer i'm afraid.
> >=20
> > The second incident involved a service outage of the builder that suppo=
rts
> > Docker based jobs. This was caused by hoster maintenance related to the
> > SAN
> > that supports those hosts, and also caused service disruptions to all
> > Notary Service operations, WebSVN and Sentry.
> > This outage impacted us for approximately 12 hours and has now been
> > corrected with all services fully returned to normal.
> >=20
> > Apologies for the disruption caused by these incidents, it is most
> > regrettable - and in the case of the issue affecting VM builds -
> > completely
> > avoidable.
> >=20
> > Please let me know if you have any questions on the above.
> >=20
> > Many thanks,
> > Ben