can gitlab-ci.yml share its variables to ssh?

Question

I'm trying to deploy my Docker Image to the server via GitLab CI. I have set variables inside yml file and I am connecting to my server via SSH. Is it possible to automatically use variables inside the yml file or do I have to pass them one by one to SSH?

also, I would like to know if there is a better way to deploy this other than my way.

deploy:
  image: alpine
  variables:
    #this may be overridden by parent pipeline, or it will be latest
    my_nginx: registry.gitlab.com/myprofile/nginx:latest 
  before_script:
    - apk add openssh-client
    - eval $(ssh-agent -s)
    - echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - 
    - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
    - chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  script:
    - scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no docker-compose.yml $HOST:~
    - >
      ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no $HOST "
      echo "$CI_JOB_TOKEN"  | docker login -u "$CI_REGISTRY_USER" $CI_REGISTRY --password-stdin;
      cd ~; 
      my_nginx=$my_nginx 
      docker-compose pull; 
      docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans; 
      docker image prune;"

services:
  nginx:
    container_name: my-nginx
    image: $my_nginx
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 80:80

Does this answer your question? [Can I forward env variables over ssh?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4409951/can-i-forward-env-variables-over-ssh) — sytech, Mar 30 '22 at 18:57
thats actually how i do it right now, passing one by one. there must be a better way. — quvazzar, Mar 30 '22 at 19:24

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '22 at 05:42

Docker out of the box can connect to a remote Docker Daemon using SSH. So no need to copy docker-compose.yaml or forward environment variables.

All you need is to set the DOCKER_HOST variable to point to the SSH uri of your remote docker daemon.

deploy:
  image: alpine
  variables:
    #this may be overridden by parent pipeline, or it will be latest
    my_nginx: registry.gitlab.com/myprofile/nginx:latest 
    DOCKER_HOST: ssh://$HOST # format is ssh://user@host
  before_script:
    - apk add openssh-client
    - eval $(ssh-agent -s)
    - echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add - 
    - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
    - chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  script:
    - echo "$CI_JOB_TOKEN"  | docker login -u "$CI_REGISTRY_USER" $CI_REGISTRY --password-stdin;
      docker-compose pull; 
      docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans; 
      docker image prune;"

can gitlab-ci.yml share its variables to ssh?

1 Answers1