## Summary <!-- Briefly summarize the bug --> As requested in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/work_items/39426, I'm seeing quite a lot of `ERROR: Job failed (system failure): context deadline exceeded` with different jobs over several projects. Restarting them has a high chance of solving the issue, the most restarts I needed to do was 2. ## Steps to reproduce <!-- What do you need to do to reproduce the bug? Please include job definitions or git repository structure if relevant --> Unknown, does not seem to have a common cause as different jobs fail. <!-- Please add the definition of the job from `.gitlab-ci.yml` that is failing inside of the code blocks (```) below. --> ## Actual behavior The job fails. ## Expected behavior The job doesn't fail. ## Relevant logs and/or screenshots <!-- Paste the job logs inside the code blocks (```) below so they are easier to read. --> <details> <summary> job log </summary> ```sh Running with gitlab-runner 19.1.0 (5eb085ab) on gitlab-runner 4af7cf5ea, system ID: s_e9d9fda0c53a Preparing the "docker" executor 00:00 Using Docker executor with image node:24.16.0-bookworm-slim ... Using effective pull policy of [if-not-present] for container node:24.16.0-bookworm-slim Using locally found image version due to "if-not-present" pull policy Using docker image sha256:d9e872c3ee59358dc71c3c99957c2d8ccd3f21419fee87b742faddcf00a6ecee for node:24.16.0-bookworm-slim with digest node@sha256:2c87ef9bd3c6a3bd4b472b4bec2ce9d16354b0c574f736c476489d09f560a203 ... Preparing environment 00:01 Using effective pull policy of [if-not-present] for container sha256:ce97bae938ac8d3935d3cc6f99ab1a21d2d5708e4df3884726a0613d1d21fac7 Running on runner-4af7cf5ea-project-125-concurrent-1 via gitlab-runner... Getting source from Git repository 00:05 Gitaly correlation ID: 01KVQM1QFC7N725TWCT14QH513 Fetching changes with git depth set to 20... Reinitialized existing Git repository in /builds/4af7cf5ea/1/extern/<project>/.git/ Created fresh repository. Checking out 16f0de1a as detached HEAD (ref is refs/merge-requests/164/head)... Removing software/Omega/omega.client/openapi/.npmrc Removing software/Omega/omega.client/openapi/node_modules/ Removing software/Omega/omega.client/src/api_specs/ Skipping Git submodules setup Restoring cache 00:54 Checking cache for <project>-v2_npm-default-protected... No URL provided, cache will not be downloaded from shared cache server. Instead a local version of cache will be extracted. Successfully extracted cache Cleaning up project directory and file based variables 00:10 ERROR: Job failed (system failure): context deadline exceeded ``` </details> ## Environment description <!-- Are you using shared Runners on GitLab.com? Or is it a custom installation? Which executors are used? Please also provide the versions of related tools like `docker info` if you are using the Docker executor. --> ``` root@gitlab-runner:~# docker info Client: Docker Engine - Community Version: 29.6.0 Context: default Debug Mode: false Plugins: buildx: Docker Buildx (Docker Inc.) Version: v0.34.1 Path: /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx compose: Docker Compose (Docker Inc.) Version: v5.1.4 Path: /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose Server: Containers: 2 Running: 1 Paused: 0 Stopped: 1 Images: 23 Server Version: 29.6.0 Storage Driver: overlay2 Backing Filesystem: extfs Supports d_type: true Using metacopy: false Native Overlay Diff: true userxattr: false Logging Driver: json-file Cgroup Driver: systemd Cgroup Version: 2 Plugins: Volume: local Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local splunk syslog CDI spec directories: /etc/cdi /var/run/cdi Swarm: inactive Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc Default Runtime: runc Init Binary: docker-init containerd version: e53c7c1516c3b2bff98eb76f1f4117477e6f4e66 runc version: v1.3.6-0-g491b69ba init version: de40ad0 Security Options: apparmor seccomp Profile: builtin cgroupns Kernel Version: 6.12.94+deb13-amd64 Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) OSType: linux Architecture: x86_64 CPUs: 16 Total Memory: 47.05GiB Name: gitlab-runner ID: 51131287-10e3-4dc1-a562-89c0a14e5671 Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker Debug Mode: false Experimental: false Insecure Registries: ::1/128 127.0.0.0/8 Live Restore Enabled: false Firewall Backend: iptables EnableUserlandProxy: true UserlandProxyPath: /usr/bin/docker-proxy ``` <!-- Please add the contents of `config.toml` inside of the code blocks (```) below, remember to remove any secret tokens! --> <details> <summary> config.toml contents </summary> ```toml [[runners]] name = "gitlab-runner" url = "https://gitlab.<snip>" id = 0 token = "<snip>" token_obtained_at = 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z token_expires_at = 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z executor = "docker" environment = ["COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR=/cache/composer", "COMPOSER_HTACCESS_PROTECT=0", "YARN_CACHE_FOLDER=/cache/yarn"] [runners.docker] tls_verify = false image = "alpine:latest" privileged = false disable_entrypoint_overwrite = false oom_kill_disable = false disable_cache = false volumes = ["/opt/gitlab-runner/cache:/cache", "/opt/gitlab-runner/builds:/builds"] pull_policy = ["if-not-present"] shm_size = 0 network_mtu = 0 ``` </details> There are multiple runners on this machine, but this is the one that is used most. ### Used GitLab Runner version <!-- Please run and paste the output of `gitlab-runner --version`. If you are using a Runner where you don't have access to, please paste at least the first lines from the build log, like: ``` Running with gitlab-ci-multi-runner 1.4.2 (bcc1794) Using Docker executor with image golang:1.8 ... ``` --> ``` root@gitlab-runner:~# gitlab-runner --version Version: 19.1.0 Git revision: 5eb085ab Git branch: 19-1-stable GO version: go1.26.3 Built: 2026-06-16T21:55:37Z OS/Arch: linux/amd64 ``` ## Possible fixes <!-- (If you can, link to the line of code that might be responsible for the problem) --->