According to the docs at https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ssh_keys/
I can add a private ssh key as CI Variable and add it for my pipeline with
- eval $(ssh-agent -s)
- echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add -
However, I get an error
Error loading key "(stdin)": incomplete message
I used following command to generate the key pair:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
and tried several things to resolve the issue:
a) With and without blank line at the end of the variable
b) Change type of variable to file
c) Change the way the key is generated (different -t and -b options)
d) First write to file and then add from file
e) Change encoding
f) Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config and add the lines
HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa
=> Could not solve the issue until now.
Related question:
Error loading key "(stdin)": invalid format Gitlab CI
Some alternative commands that did not work:
echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | base64 -d | ssh-add -
Another error message that I got while trying:
Error loading key "(stdin)": error in libcrypto
Edit
As a workaround, instead of adding the private key as CI variable, I use a shell executor and manually logged in on the gitlab runner host, changed user to "gitlab-runner" and established an ssh connection. My corresponding CI Job looks like this (you need to replace remote-server.de and user@remote-server.de):
job_back_end_deploy:
stage: deploy
#variables:
# CI_DEBUG_TRACE: "true" # uncomment this to get more detailed console output
before_script:
# In order for this to work, an SSH connection already needs to be manually prepared
# between the user "gitlab-runner" on the host of the gitlab-runner and on the target server
# you would like to connect to
# Also see https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ssh_keys/#ssh-keys-when-using-the-shell-executor
# -------------------------------------
## change to user "gitlab-runner"
# su - gitlab-runner
## generate ssh key-pair
# ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
## copy public key to the remote server you would like to connect to (asks for password)
# ssh-copy-id -p 222 -i /home/gitlab-runner/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@remote-server.de
# -----------------------------
#
# verify SSH host keys, also see
# https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ssh_keys/#verifying-the-ssh-host-keys
- ssh-keyscan 'remote-server.de' >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
script:
- echo 'Copying files to remote server...'
- scp -P 222 -r ./back_end/ user@remote-server.de:./public_html/back_end/ # add -v option to see more output if you want
tags:
- visualization