Deploying to generic server with SSH, et al

HouseShafer · May 19, 2016, 5:59pm

I’m trying to set up deployment of a currently empty repo (https://circleci.com/gh/HouseShafer/circle-pushing/1) to a SimpleHelix server, located at https://random_letters_symbols_numbers.simplehelix.host. Since it isn’t one of the standard servers like Heroku, there isn’t a guide in the documentation so I was writing to ask if you could shed some light on how I can configure the project to push to a generic server like that, whether via SSH, FTP, or other means. There’s a possibility that I’m thinking about it entirely wrong but I think this is the right direction. Thanks in advance for your help!

FelicianoTech · June 16, 2016, 12:13am

Hi,

This post is almost a month old so I’m not sure if you figured this out already or not. Without knowing specifics of your project, I would suggest using SCP in the circle.yml file to copy your files from the CircleCI build container to your servers - be it a production or staging environment.

-Ricardo

HouseShafer · June 16, 2016, 3:42pm

Hi Ricardo, thanks! Appreciate that. What would the actual sequence of commands be to push using SCP? Thanks again.

FelicianoTech · June 17, 2016, 10:30pm

In the dependencies section of circle.yml you can have a line such as this:

deployment:
  production:
    branch: master
    commands:
      - scp -r circle-pushing/* username@my-server:/path-to-put-files-on-server/

“circle-pushing” is your repo name, which is whatever it’s called in GitHub or Bitbucket, and the rest is the hostname and filepath of the server you want to upload files to.

HouseShafer · June 20, 2016, 3:51pm

Thanks so much! I appreciate that.

HouseShafer · August 26, 2016, 5:40pm

It asks for a password but having it on the next line after the scp one like:

- passw0rd!23

doesn’t enter it. How would I authenticate? I also tried setting up an SSH key but it says that CircleCI doesn’t support an encrypted key. So perhaps I’m on the right track but doing something wrong? Or I could be way off. haha Thanks!

FelicianoTech · August 26, 2016, 10:00pm

You would use SSH keys. You’d need to create a new SSH key specifically for CircleCI, then add the private ket to CircleCI and the public key to your server. This is touched upon here: https://circleci.com/docs/permissions-and-access-during-deployment/

HouseShafer · August 26, 2016, 11:35pm

I tried to add an SSH key like I said in the last message but Circle rejected it with this error message:

The key is valid and authorized (though I’ll take it down now since I’m posting it online) but it still says that the key is invalid. Sorry if I’m missing something blindingly obvious. I’m trying to follow the instructions as much as I can. Thanks!

FelicianoTech · August 28, 2016, 9:34pm

Hi,

I don’t know what the rest of your input on that page looks like but from what I can see in the screenshot, the first 4 lines in the “Private Key” text area shouldn’t be there as those lines aren’t a part of the SSH key.

HouseShafer · August 29, 2016, 4:05pm

I tried without those lines and it gives the same error. If I add some headers that get generated along with it:

Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED DEK-Info: AES-128-CBC,678623D6A0CC2E2236A45C9C0FF00557

Then the error is slightly different:

Error: it looks like this key is encrypted: we don't support password-protected keys If we can help, contact us.

Can you post a legitimately formatted SSH key that I can model mine after?

FelicianoTech · August 29, 2016, 4:35pm

Are you setting a passphrase for the key? If so, you don’t want to do that. Here is an example/typical RSA format private SSH key:

A private key like this is what should be uploaded to CircleCI. Then, the corresponding public key (created at the same time as the private key) would be uploaded to your server:

ssh-rsa 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 Test Key

GitHub has a guide on creating SSH keys for Linux, OS X, and Windows. You’d want to skip the part where it says to use a secure passphrase though.

lgedeon · February 1, 2017, 4:09am

I used the scp commad in my deployment section, but it is saying

stdin: is not a tty
sugarfield-snippets/*: No such file or directory

scp -r sugarfield-snippets/* kdari@kdari.com:/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sugarfield-snippets/ returned exit code 1

The repo in github is sugarfield-snippets. https://github.com/lgedeon/sugarfield-snippets/blob/master/circle.yml

Any ideas?

zzak · February 7, 2017, 11:23am

Could you send us a link to a build which reproduces this error?

lgedeon · February 14, 2017, 7:32pm

Figured it out. I was basing my circle.yml on the - scp -r circle-pushing/* username@my-server:/path-to-put-files-on-server/ example above, but I thought that the circle-pushing part of the command was referring to the repository name, so I put my repo name there. But, that was apparently pointing to a folder inside the repo. I needed to deploy the full repo. When I used a * instead, it worked.

FelicianoTech · March 3, 2017, 10:00pm

A post was split to a new topic: How to deploy with SCP and custom port

leymannx · May 18, 2017, 9:43am

Actually I don’t know if it’s supposed to work like following. But this is the only way I got it running in the end after trying all possible combinations of public/private SSH key placements.

On server git clone GitHub repo into new folder. Ceckout develop branch.
On server create a new user, add him to www-data group, chown the folder.
On server generate an SSH key pair for the new user.
On server add the new user’s public key to the new user’s authorized_keys file.
Add the public key as deploy key to the repo on GitHub.
Add the private key to the project on Circle (Project Settings > Permissions > SSH Permissions) and ensure to have a hostname set.

Add the following at the end of your circle.yml:

 # These commands are triggered only after a successful (green) build.
 deployment:
   dev:
     branch: develop
     commands:
       - ssh myuser@myhostname 'cd /path/to/my/repo && git pull origin develop'

Commit and push this into the develop branch.
On the server log in as the new user, checkout develop branch and pull at least once.
On your local machine, on the develop branch, create a new commit and push it. Go watch build running on Circle CI.

parkstreet-ci · May 1, 2018, 9:30pm

This is still an issue on version 2.0, I had to use chrome dev tools to inspect the network response to find out what was going on, the response from the server said that the key was encrypted therefore it was not supported, while on the UI there was no feedback about this, might be helpful to add a message on the UI informing the user what happened.

system · July 30, 2018, 9:30pm

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Deploying to generic server with SSH, et al

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