SSH to remote server refused if done via GitLab CI

GitLab CI/CD
1

We have a RHEL 7 remote server where I created a dummy user called gitlabci.

  • While SSH’d into the remote server, I generated a public-private key pair (id_rsa)
    • Uploaded the public key as a deploy key for use later when we get our CI set up
  • Generated a public-private key pair in my local machine
    • Added the public key to the remote server’s authorized_keys
    • Added the private key to the project’s CI environment variables

The idea is when the CI runs, the GitLab runner will SSH into the remote server as the gitlabci user I created then fetch the branch into the web directory.

I thought I have set up the keys properly but whenever the runner tries to SSH, the connection gets refused.

$ which ssh-agent || ( apt-get update -y && apt-get install openssh-client git -y )
...
$ eval $(ssh-agent -s)
Agent pid 457
$ echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - > /dev/null
Identity added: (stdin) (GitLab CI)
$ mkdir -p ~/.ssh
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
$ [[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n\n" > ~/.ssh/config
$ ssh gitlabci@random.server.com
Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
ssh: connect to host random.server.com port 22: Connection refused
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 1

When I tried to SSH into the remote server using the key pair I generated it did work.

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/gitlabci gitlabci@random.server.com
Last login: Mon Nov  4 13:49:59 2019 from machine01.work.server.com
2

Hello Sir i am having a similar issue with ssh. Did you solve it?

3

@suyog.dahal7 yes I did. Apparently it was just a typo on my part. Instead of gitlabci@random.server.com I used gitlabci@random@server.com - notice the two @ signs. I fixed that and the SSH started working.

You may want to output some logs when you try to SSH:

ssh -vvv gitlabci@random.server.com