Interesting find. This sounds like a problem with the Runner infrastructure - the parts we do not see as users.
- Runner 17.6.0 is 1 year old, might have bugs.
- We don’t know the config.toml, maybe the default shell is set, and other limitations apply
- Which host system is used, caches, Docker versions, bugs in there.
If you can, involve an admin of that infrastructure to help investigate with settings, version, logs. And suggest upgrading to 18.5.x to match the same server major version.
Something had changed in that project - yesterday I was able to see these pipeline job logs without login, today it is limited. Pipeline #13463 · asdf / asdf · GitLab
No need for you to investigate permissions, just copy over relevant log snippets 