Gitlab CI/CD: Deploy to ubuntu server using ssh keys (using a windows shell runner) - ssh

Question

Hello everyone i need your help plz, i'm using gitlab ci/cd and trying to deploy my .jar application to an ubuntu server, i configured my gitlab project with a windows runner with shell executor. i configured a key based access on the runner to avoid being prompt for a password;
the following command runs successfully when i login to the runner machine and use it's powershell :
scp -i C:\Users\Administrators\ssh\id_rsa myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar username#myubuntuserver:/
but when i'm using the above commande in my .yml file to copy the .jar on the server, it doesn't give any response until the job fail due to timeout
i tried also the solution proposed here https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ssh_keys/ by setting an SSH_PRIVATE_KEY variable on my project but i'm unable to adapt the given 'before_script' to my windows runner.
this is the before_script proposed in the documentation (above link):
before_script:
- 'which ssh-agent || ( apt-get update -y && apt-get install openssh-client -y )'
- eval $(ssh-agent -s)
- echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add -
- mkdir -p ~/.ssh
- chmod 700 ~/.ssh
when the previous scp command is replaced by this:
ssh -iv C:\Users\Administrators\ssh\id_rsa username#myubuntuserver
i get the following output:
the image
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

It works after doing the following steps:
1) configuring the runner (shell executor) on ubuntu 18.04
2) Then from the terminal login as the gitlab-runner user: sudo su - gitlab-runner
3) run ssh-keygen -t rsa
4) run ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa username#myubuntuserver:
5) run cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh username#myubuntuserver "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod -R go= ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
5) now you can add the following to your job script (yml file) and it should work:
- scp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa fileToCopy username#myubuntuserver:/mydirectory
#you can execute multiple commands at a time, for ex:
- ssh username#myubuntuserver " mv /mydirectory/myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar /mydirectory/myapp.jar "
Hope it will help

Answer 2

If ssh -iv C:\Users\Administrators\ssh\id_rsa username#myubuntuserver does not work, that may be because of the C: part, which confuses ssh into thinkig C is the name of the server!
A Unix-like path would work:
ssh -iv /C/Users/Administrators/ssh/id_rsa username#myubuntuserver
But, as the OP Medmahmoud comments, this supposes the public key has been published on the server:
Configure the runner on ubuntu18.04.
Then from the terminal login as the gitlab-runner user:
sudo su - gitlab-runner - run ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa username#myubuntuserver
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh username#myubuntuserver \
"mkdir -p ~/.ssh && touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod -R go= ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
Now from your yml file the following should work:
- scp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa pom.xml username#myubuntuserver:/mydirectory