rundeck: Open Source Compliance & Risk Management

What is rundeck?

What it is

Rundeck is an open source runbook automation service maintained by PagerDuty, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and published from the rundeck.org homepage. It provides a web console, command line tools, and a WebAPI, and its stated purpose is to enable self-service operations by giving specific users access to existing tools, services, and scripts. The repository is 16 years old and lives in the DevOps and operations tooling ecosystem, alongside topics such as ansible, automation, deployment, audit, ops, and devops-tools.

The concrete problem it solves is operational standardization. Teams that already have scripts, tools, and automation scattered across environments can use Rundeck to execute workflows across those existing automations, or to quickly automate procedures that were previously carried out by hand. It deploys automation across a set of nodes, letting an organization standardize tasks and improve operational quality rather than relying on individual operators remembering procedures. The registry category it sits in is Business Software / Compliance & Risk Management, which reflects the audit and access-control emphasis of the topics rather than a purely technical classification.

Key capabilities

Web console for defining and running jobs, alongside command line tools and a WebAPI for the same operations.
Self-service access model that grants specific users access to existing tools, services, and scripts.
Execution of workflows across existing automations, and rapid automation of previously manual procedures.
Deployment of automation across a set of nodes to standardize tasks.
Command line and API surfaces for driving automation without the web console.
Audit as a listed topic, indicating a focus on traceable operation history.
Ansible listed among topics, alongside general automation, deployment, and operations concerns.

Who uses it and how

DevOps and operations teams that need to expose curated scripts and jobs to users who should not hold direct infrastructure credentials.
Platform and deployment engineers running the same procedure across many nodes as a standardized job rather than as ad hoc commands.
Teams converting manual runbooks into executable workflows through the web console, command line tools, or the WebAPI.
Organizations in the compliance and risk management space that need audit-oriented records of who ran what.
Groups already invested in Ansible or similar automation that want a front end over automations they already maintain.

Getting started

Installation packages are published as Deb, RPM, and War downloads, with install instructions in the official documentation and a Docker image built as rundeck/rundeck. Building from source uses Gradle and requires Java 11 and NodeJs 18.

When to use it — and when not to

Rundeck fits teams that want a self-hosted control point over scripts and automation they already own, with audit and scoped user access built around that control point. A self-hoster takes on running the service itself, and the published build requirements of Java 11 and NodeJs 18 mean the toolchain around it has to be maintained rather than treated as fire-and

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Execute workflows across your existing automations
or quickly automate previously manual procedures.

Deb	RPM	War
Download	Download	Download

Rundeck by PagerDuty is an open source runbook automation service with a web console, command line tools and a WebAPI. It lets you easily standardize tasks to improve operational quality by deploying automation across a set of nodes.

See the Release Notes for the latest version information.

How To Build:

Primary build is supported with gradle. More info in the wiki.

Requirements: Java 11, NodeJs 18

Cloudsmith Authentication Setup

For PagerDuty employees with Cloudsmith access

Export your Cloudsmith token before building:

export CLOUDSMITH_NPM_TOKEN=your-cloudsmith-token-here

For contributors without Cloudsmith access

Delete the .npmrc and package-lock.json files in the ui-trellis package:

rm rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis/.npmrc rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis/package-lock.json

And the .npmrc and package-lock.json files in the _package-manager directory:

rm rundeckapp/grails-app/assets/javascripts/_package-manager/.npmrc rundeckapp/grails-app/assets/javascripts/_package-manager/package-lock.json

Build with Gradle

Produces: rundeckapp/build/libs/rundeck-X.Y.war

./gradlew build

Docker Build

Uses the war artifact and creates the rundeck/rundeck:SNAPSHOT docker image:

./gradlew :docker:officialBuild

dockerTags adds additional tags on the image
- Ex: -PdockerTags=local,local-RUN-123
jreVersion=openjdk-17-jre-headless specifies the JRE version for the image
- Ex: -PjreVersion=openjdk-17-jre-headless

Run UI Tests

Run jest unit tests for Core UI

CORE_UI=rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis
npm run --prefix "$CORE_UI" dev:test:unit

Watch UI Tests

Run jest unit tests for Core UI and watch for changes

CORE_UI=rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis
npm run --prefix "$CORE_UI" dev:test:watch

Build UI in Dev Mode

Build the core UI components in dev mode, which copies the artifacts immediately to the assets dir of the running application.

CORE_UI=rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis
npm run --prefix "$CORE_UI" dev

Run Storybook for UI

Run storybook for the core UI components.

CORE_UI=rundeckapp/grails-spa/packages/ui-trellis
npm run --prefix "$CORE_UI" storybook

Documentation

Available online at

FAQ:

Development

Refer to the IDE Development Environment to get set up using IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse/STS.

Issue tracker at github.com

Do you have changes to contribute? Please see the Development wiki page.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Frequently asked questions

Is rundeck free to use?

rundeck is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does rundeck do?

Enable Self-Service Operations: Give specific users access to your existing tools, services, and scripts

What is rundeck written in?

rundeck is primarily written in Groovy. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/rundeck/rundeck, and it has 6,301 GitHub stars.