Unregister a GitLab Runner: Easy How To Guide

GitLab Runner is an application that works with GitLab CI/CD to run jobs in a pipeline. When enabled, GitLab Runner uses a CI/CD job token to clone the submodules with the permissions of the user executing the job and does not require SSH credentials. This article discusses how to unregister GitLab Runner in Windows. Here is a guide on how to install, register and start GitLab Runner on Windows, and how to fix “Failed to remove network for build: Error during connect in the default daemon configuration on Windows, the Docker client must be run with elevated privileges“.

This operation cannot be undone. It updates the configuration file, so make sure to have a backup of config.toml before executing (un-registering) it.

Here are some related guides: How to install Git on macOS, How to uninstall Git on macOS, Practical Git use with markdown, how to clone a repository and install software from GitHub on Windows, and how to use AWS CodeCommit.

Unregister GitLab-runner

You can only add a single instance of GitLab runner to a system. This registered runner is added to the configuration file.

Discover the intriguing aspect of the ability to employ multiple configurations within a singular GitLab Runner installation. Executing gitlab-runner register adds a new configuration entry. It doesn’t remove the previous ones.

Method 1: By URL and token: To unregister a specific runner. First, get the runner’s details by executing the following command below.

gitlab-runner list

If you have access to the device which was used to register the GitLab runner, you can unregister the runner using the following command, where you replace the {TOKEN} with the token of your GitLab runner (e.g. 250cff67 in the example above)

gitlab-runner unregister --url https://gitlab.org/ --token {TOKEN}

Also, see Azure DevOps and GitHub integration for Docker and Kubernetes deployment, and how to build your first CI/CD Pipeline in Azure DevOps using ASP.Net Core Application.

Method 2: When multiple runners share a name. The removal process affects only the first runner.

gitlab-runner unregister --name test-runner

Method 3 – For All runners, you can also unregister all runners by using the command below.

gitlab-runner unregister --all-runners

Method 4: This is my recommended approach. Navigate to the GitLab-runner folder as shown below and stop the service.

Next, run the command to uninstall

.\gitlab-runner.exe uninstall

Finally, remove the directory with this command below

rmdir /s GitLab-Runner

The following commands allow you to manage the runner as a system or user service. Use them to install, uninstall, start, and stop the runner service. Kindly refer to these related guides on how to uninstall GitLab from your Windows device. Also, see how to install, register and start GitLab Runner on Windows.

As shown in the image above. The image below shows how you can run these commands as you wish.

If you’re looking for assistance, our guide on how to Unregister a GitLab Runner can be of great help. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.