[cbartz]

Applicable spec: N/A

Overview

Jobs started by the GARM agent now get /home/ubuntu/.local/bin on PATH (through /etc/environment) and SHELL=/bin/bash (the runner account's login shell), matching the previous runner manager.

Rationale

#245 runs the agent in a PAM session, but a PAM session doesn't run a login shell, so ~/.profile never adds ~/.local/bin. Tools installed with pipx or pip install --user then fail with command not found in later steps. pam_env reads PATH from /etc/environment, which is also where GitHub-hosted runners put it. The runner alias account was created with useradd's default /bin/sh shell, while legacy and GitHub-hosted runners have /bin/bash.

An environment comparison of legacy, GARM and GitHub-hosted runners also found umask and XDG_DATA_DIRS differences. They're left unchanged on purpose: 0022 matches GitHub-hosted runners, and XDG_DATA_DIRS only matters to desktop apps.

Juju Events Changes

None.

Module Changes

cloud-init.sh.j2 configure_system_users: prepends ~/.local/bin to PATH in /etc/environment and gives the runner account /bin/bash. The new integration checks use systemd-run with User=runner and PAMName=su-l to reproduce the job environment.

Library Changes

None.

Checklist

• The charm style guide was applied
• The contributing guide was applied
• The changes are compliant with ISD054 - Managing Charm Complexity
• The documentation for charmhub is updated.
• The PR is tagged with appropriate label (urgent, trivial, senior-review-required, documentation)
• The docs/changelog.md is updated with user-relevant changes in the format of keep a changelog v1.1.0
• The application version is incremented in app/pyproject.toml

AI-generated message.

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The implementation matches the stated goal and includes integration checks across the supported image matrix.

0 open findings

What changed in this PR

Restores the expected login environment for GARM runner jobs.

Changes:

• Adds the user-local binary directory to the PAM-provided PATH.
• Sets the runner account’s shell to Bash.
• Adds integration coverage, changelog entry, and patch version bump.

File	Description
docs/​changelog.md	Documents the environment fix.
app/​tests/​unit/​test_openstack_builder.py	Updates rendered cloud-init expectations.
app/​tests/​integration/​commands.py	Verifies runner PATH and SHELL.
app/​src/​github_runner_image_builder/​templates/​cloud-init.sh.j2	Configures the environment and runner shell.
app/​pyproject.toml	Bumps the application version to 0.14.4.

🧠 Review effort: Balanced

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[cbartz]

force merging - application integration test pass . there is one charm integration test failing due to a garm runner picking it up (chicken-egg problem), but the pr does not really touch charm code so I don't anticipate issues there.