Avoid failures when other runners are already registered with same name

[jeverling]

Hi, we were running into issues where newly created instances weren't able to register with Github as runners, because by default the hostname is used as --name, and AWS was reusing hostnames from our IP range.
This can be fixed by setting the name explicitly, to something that is unique.
I think --name $(hostname)-$(uuidgen) should work well.

Fixes #128

[scottdickerson]

this is awesome and was also causing us problems.

[GiovaneRibeiro-neuro]

Awesome fix! I am facing this problem right now on my builds... When this PR will be merged?

[dsnjunior]

Awesome fix! I am facing this problem right now on my builds... When this PR will be merged?

It looks like it won't be that soon.

If it helps we are using it like that:

- name: Start EC2 runner
  uses: kimetrica/ec2-github-runner@set-unique-name-in-UserData-script

[thimios]

We are also running in the same issue, it would be great to see this merged soon

[humzam]

I think we are also facing the issue at my company! Now that we ramped up the # of instances, its causing lots of failed runner registrations. I see repeated log lines on the machine with:

2025-12-11T11:29:15.859530-08:00 ip-10-102-30-214 user-data:  A runner exists with the same name

@Preen Any chance we could get this PR merged and released?

[Preen]

@humzam someone needs to fix the conflicts that are present. I dont have the time to do it right now sadly.

[Preen]

@jeverling
Would you have time to fix the conflicts?

[jeverling]

Yes, but not before next week.

…

On Thu, Dec 11, 2025, 20:36 Philip Mannheimer ***@***.***> wrote: *Preen* left a comment (machulav/ec2-github-runner#127) <#127 (comment)> @jeverling <https://github.com/jeverling> Would you have time to fix the conflicts? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#127 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAA5YWQYRQBMFVESEX5IGOL4BHBU5AVCNFSM6AAAAACOYVCIDOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTMNBTGQ4TMMZZHE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[jeverling]

I have updated the PR. There shouldn't be any more conflicts.
I'm not sure why the Github diff shows changes for a lot of lines that are the same, they don't show up in any of the diff tools I tried (VS Code, kdiff3, meld).
I only changed the lines that contain --labels ${label}, to include the --name parameter.

[Preen]

It looks like you removed './run.sh',
ab95878#diff-3d2b59189eeedc2d428ddd632e97658fe310f587f7cb63b01f9b98ffc11c0197L145027

?

[jeverling]

It looks like you removed './run.sh', ab95878#diff-3d2b59189eeedc2d428ddd632e97658fe310f587f7cb63b01f9b98ffc11c0197L145027

?

No, this was removed in the main branch of this repo. I merged main into the set-unique-name-in-UserData-script branch in our fork, to bring it up-to-date. The only changes should be the lines where ./config.sh is being called with the --label parameter.
Check out this diff between the current main HEAD of this repo, and the fork: main...kimetrica:ec2-github-runner:set-unique-name-in-UserData-script

[humzam]

The diff looks good now 👍