Ubuntu – How to build and push quarkus native container in CI?

I just want to build a CI workflow that creates and pushes a quarkus native micro container.

For months, on and off, I’ve tried to get this to work. I always run into the issue that docker commands won’t work in the job.

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

I tried so many ways. Building CI steps one command at a time. Debugging like that. Using other images for the job. Using different actions. It just won’t build that Docker image.

It neither worked on gitlab.com nor github.com. So I set up my own Gitea instance, since at some point I read that dind is not supported in those sites. AFAIK, I followed every how-to I could find, on how to set-up action runners to work with dind. But they obviously just don’t.

I’m out of ideas. Don’t know what to search for anymore. I don’t even know what I need to tell you, so you could help me. But I’ll try.

I’m running Gitea in a k8s cluster with the official Gitea Helm Chart.

I have a single act_runner deployment. Running fine and doing jobs as it should:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
spec:
  progressDeadlineSeconds: 600
  replicas: 1
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: act-runner
  strategy:
    rollingUpdate:
      maxSurge: 25%
      maxUnavailable: 25%
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
        - command:
            - sh
            - '-c'
            - >-
              while ! nc -z localhost 2376 </dev/null; do echo 'waiting for
              docker daemon...'; sleep 5; done; /sbin/tini -- /opt/act/run.sh
          env:
            - name: DOCKER_HOST
              value: tcp://localhost:2376
            - name: DOCKER_CERT_PATH
              value: /certs/client
            - name: DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY
              value: '1'
            - name: GITEA_INSTANCE_URL
              value: http://gitea-http:3000
            - name: GITEA_RUNNER_REGISTRATION_TOKEN
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  key: token
                  name: runner-secret
          image: gitea/act_runner:latest
          imagePullPolicy: Always
          name: runner
          resources: {}
          terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
          terminationMessagePolicy: File
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: /certs
              name: docker-certs
            - mountPath: /data
              name: runner-data
            
        - env:
            - name: DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR
              value: /certs
          image: docker:23.0.6-dind
          imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
          name: daemon
          resources: {}
          securityContext:
            privileged: true
          terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
          terminationMessagePolicy: File
          volumeMounts:
            - mountPath: /certs
              name: docker-certs
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
      restartPolicy: Always
      schedulerName: default-scheduler
      securityContext: {}
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
      volumes:
        - emptyDir: {}
          name: docker-certs
        - name: runner-data
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: act-runner-vol

My workflow definition looks like this:

name: Main Push
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  verify:
    name: Verify
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up GraalVM JDK
        uses: graalvm/setup-graalvm@v1
        with:
          java-version: '21'
          distribution: 'graalvm'

      - name: Set up Maven
        uses: stCarolas/setup-maven@v4
        with:
          maven-version: '3.9.6'

      - name: Maven Verify
        run: mvn --batch-mode --update-snapshots verify

  push_container:
    needs: verify
    name: Push Container
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up GraalVM JDK
        uses: graalvm/setup-graalvm@v1
        with:
          java-version: '21'
          distribution: 'graalvm'

      - name: Set up Maven
        uses: stCarolas/setup-maven@v4
        with:
          maven-version: '3.9.6'

      - name: Maven Install
        run: mvn --batch-mode --update-snapshots install -Dnative -Dquarkus.container-image.build=true -Dquarkus.container-image.push=true -Dquarkus.container-image.username=dscham -Dquarkus.container-image.password=${{ secrets.GITEA_TOKEN }}

Everything runs through. Only in the end, when the maven install command get’s to building the container image, it fails due to aforementioned error. I used different images for the job. Tried installing docker in a manual step. Used a setup docker action from Action Marketplace. Nothing worked to fix this.

Edit/Addition:

Trying both methods described by @datawookie in his answer, I get:

Client:
 Version:           24.0.9-2
 API version:       1.43
 Go version:        go1.21.9
 Git commit:        293681613032e6d1a39cc88115847d3984195c24
 Built:             Wed Jan 31 20:53:14 UTC 2024
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?