Trying to use SSH key as environment viariable

Bruno Barros

Hey everyone!

 

I'd like to use Pipelines environment variables to handle a SSH key. I literally followed the documentation. Well I think at least. But I keep getting "Permission denied (publickey)." 

Does anyone know where I could have a look to fix this?

Here's the configuration I use the same as the documentation) :

- mkdir -p ~/.ssh
- cat my_known_hosts >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
- (umask  077 ; echo $SSH_KEY | base64 --decode > ~/.ssh/id_rsa)
- ssh $USER@$HOST 'echo "connected to `hostname` as $USER"'

Shane Fast

 A few things you can try:

1. Is your key base64 encoded? Heres a site that can do the trick: https://www.base64encode.org/ - also make sure that the encoded key has no spaces before saving into your environment variables. 

2. If you're not too worried about anyone reading your pipeline logs you can print out the contents of the id_rsa file to make sure you're getting a valid key:

- cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa

3. Add a '-v' flag to your ssh call and require the id_rsa file as well: 

- ssh -v -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa $USER$HOST 'echo "connected to `hostname` as $USER"'

the -v flag will give you more verbose information about the connection process.

You might also have an issue using single quotes around the ssh command - using double quotes will render the environment variable before sending the command to your remote server (I learned that the hard way).