Automation Task: GitLab CI Troubleshooting

Description

Systematic approach for identifying and fixing failures in GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

Common Symptoms

• Pipeline jobs stuck or timeout
• Permissions errors on runners
• Variable or secrets not resolving
• Script exits with non-zero status

Triage Steps

1. View job logs in GitLab UI for traceback
2. Retry with debug enabled:

   before_script:
     - set -x  # bash debug output
   

3. Check GitLab Runner logs (on host):

   journalctl -u gitlab-runner
   

Common Fixes

• Validate .gitlab-ci.yml syntax:

  gitlab-runner verify
  

• Ensure secrets are available in job context
• Use --docker-privileged if Docker-in-Docker is needed

Tools & Commands

• GitLab UI, GitLab Runner CLI, set -x, echo $CI_*