First see Adding Github Actions to a repo
You will need an on-prem machine and service account to run the runner. Either you or someone from ESCP will need root privilege to configure the service. Please contact escp-ticket@tufts.edu to create these.
After the service account is created, someone with root privileges should do this:
In your web browser, browse to your repository.
Go to Settings > Actions > Runners > New Self-Hosted Runner.
It will give you a series of commands to paste into the terminal. Instead of pasting them into the terminal, do this:
Find the line that says "./config.sh --url=..."
Get the URL and the token.
Read the URL to ensure it's a specific repository, not the organization or whatever.
Run this script as root. The script installs the runner, creates the service, and launches the service as the service account. It records the URL of which repository it's working for, in the service account's home directory under "actions-runner-url.txt":
# Optionally, if you need your runner to have any custom label, you may specify --labels= /root/bin/create-gitrunner.sh username GithubRepositoryURL token [--labels=foobarlabel]
Browse back to Actions > Runners, and confirm the new runner appears there, with a green Status, and Idle.
Removing a private runner
If you installed a runner as above and need to remove it:
Login as root
cd ${service_user}/actions-runner ./svc.sh uninstall rm -rf ${service_user}/actions-runnerLook in ${service_user}/actions-runner-url.txt
Browse to that repository > Settings > Actions > Runners, and force-remove the runner.
Finally
rm ${service_user}/actions-runner-url.txt