SSH connection fails in Bitbucket pipeline

[Robert-Paul]

Hi everyone,

I’m stuck with the following Bitbucket pipeline YAML script. When the runner tries to connect to another server via SSH, it fails, even though the private/public key pair is correctly set up. From the machine running the runner, the SSH connection works fine, but not from within the runner process itself

+ ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $SSH_USER:$SSH_HOST << EOF

echo 'Run deploy...'

docker stop xyz-website || true

docker rm xyz-website || true

docker run -d \

--name xyz-website \

-p 80:5010 \

--restart always \

echo 'Deployment finished.'

EOF

And here’s the error output:

Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.

Warning: Permanently added '<HOST>,<IP>' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.

ssh_askpass: exec(/usr/bin/ssh-askpass): No such file or directory

Permission denied, please try again.

ssh_askpass: exec(/usr/bin/ssh-askpass): No such file or directory

Permission denied, please try again.

It seems like SSH is falling back to a password prompt when the public/private key authentication fails, but since there’s no ssh-askpass available, the connection breaks.

Has anyone run into this before? Or is there something I’m missing in how Bitbucket handles SSH keys inside the runner process?

[Ben · Accepted solution]

Hi @Robert-Paul 

To assist further, we'll need access to your workspace. Our system requires a formal support ticket to be raised to do so.

As you're a Standard subscription customer, please raise a ticket directly with our support team for further support using your paid workspace URL:

• https://support.atlassian.com/contact/

Cheers!

- Ben (Bitbucket Cloud Support)