How to pass environment variable to docker run in gitlab ci cd

Question

I am trying to pass the env variable to my node js docker build image ,while running as shown below

stages:
  - publish
  - deploy
 
variables:
  TAG_LATEST: $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME:latest
  TAG_COMMIT: $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME:$CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA



publish:
  image: docker:latest
  stage: publish
  services:
    - docker:dind
  script:
    - touch env.txt
    - docker build -t $TAG_COMMIT -t $TAG_LATEST .
    - docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN $CI_REGISTRY
    - docker push $TAG_COMMIT
    - docker push $TAG_LATEST

deploy:
  image: alpine:latest
  stage: deploy
  tags:
    - deployment
  script:
    - chmod og= $ID_RSA
    - apk update && apk add openssh-client
    - echo "AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID"=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID >> "env.txt"
    - echo "AWS_S3_BUCKET"=$AWS_S3_BUCKET >> "env.txt"
    - echo "AWS_S3_REGION"=$AWS_S3_REGION >> "env.txt"
    - echo "AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY"=$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY >> "env.txt"
    - echo "DB_URL"=$DB_URL >> "env.txt"
    - echo "JWT_EXPIRES_IN"=$JWT_EXPIRES_IN >> "env.txt"
    - echo "OTP_EXPIRE_TIME_SECONDS"=$OTP_EXPIRE_TIME_SECONDS >> "env.txt"
    - echo "TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID"=$TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID >> "env.txt"
    - echo "TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN"=$TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN >> "env.txt"
    - echo "TWILLIO_SENDER"=$TWILLIO_SENDER >> "env.txt"
    - ssh -i $ID_RSA -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $SERVER_USER@$SERVER_IP "docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN $CI_REGISTRY"
    - ssh -i $ID_RSA -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $SERVER_USER@$SERVER_IP "docker pull $TAG_COMMIT"
    - ssh -i $ID_RSA -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $SERVER_USER@$SERVER_IP "docker container rm -f my-app || true"
    - ssh -i $ID_RSA -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $SERVER_USER@$SERVER_IP "docker run --env-file env.txt  -d -p 8080:8080 --name my-app $TAG_COMMIT"  

  environment:
    name: development
    url: 90900
  only:
    - master

I am running this command docker run --env-file env.txt ,but it gives me an error docker: open env.txt: no such file or directory.

How Can I solve the issue ,to pass multiple variables in my docker run command

user_5582849 · Answer

Which job is failing? In your deploy job, you are creating the env.txt locally and using SSH to do the docker building, but you never scp your local env.txt to $SERVER_USER@$SERVER_ID for the remote process to pick it up.

user_1472602 · Answer

I had the same issue using Gitlab ci/cd. i.e. Trying to inject env vars that were referenced in the project .env file via the runner (docker executor) into the output docker container.

We don't want to commit any sensitive info into git so one option is to save them on the server in a file and include via the --env-file flag but Gitlab runner creates a new container for every run so not possible to use this as the host server running the yaml script is ephemeral and not the actual server that Gitlab runner was installed onto.

The suggestion by @dmoonfire to scp the file over sounded like a good solution but I couldn't get it to work to copy a file from external to the gitlab runner. I'd need to copy the public key from the executor to the gitlab runner server but the docker executor is ephemeral.

I found the simplest solution to use the Gitlab CI/CD variable settings. It's possible to mask variables and restrict to protected branches or protected tags etc. These get injected into the container so that your .env file can access.

How to pass environment variable to docker run in gitlab ci cd

2 Answers