How to do ssh to a remote linux machine from GitHub actions?

[shikhindahikar]

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Hi, I would like to connect to a remote linux machine using ssh keys where I will have a public key on the remote and private key as a GitHub actions secret. I want to be able to run some terminal commands on the remote, such as git commands, and some build scripts. Any way I can achieve this using the GitHub actions?
I have so far tried appleboy/ssh-actions but it seems that it only works for docker containers.

[Sinofage]

It seems like you have connections issues to your machine rather issue with appleboy/ssh-action, verify firstly if you can even log with ssh to that machine.

And if you can, here is an example of how I used it to connect to windows machine with ssh it might help you:

- name: Deploying Script
        uses: appleboy/[email protected]
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.SERVER_IP }}
          username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USER }}
          password: ${{ secrets.SERVER_KEY }}
          port: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PORT }}
          timeout: 300s

          script: |
            powershell command

[Sinofage]

I would suggest to you to use hardcoded credentials to test it before trying doing any input variables cause there's might a chance something breaks when you do variable for example:

          host: ${{ secrets.SERVER_IP }}
          username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USER }}
          key: ${{ secrets.SERVER_KEY }}
          port: ${{ secrets.SERVER_PORT }}

And as I said before it could be connection issue it's hard to debug from our point of view who trying to help you because this issue is from your side of environment it's not related the github it would require more information of your infrastructure or where your machine is located.
Regardless that might as well start checking your firewall if you are allowed to ssh into a machine from different ip with port 22 like github services, there's way to many variables unknown for us to help if you don't provide information.

[shikhindahikar]

In the remote, I have checked using sudo ufw status which gives me

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
22                         ALLOW       Anywhere                  
22/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere                  
22 (v6)                    ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

if that is what you meant.
I tried to hardcode host and username too, I get the same error of timeout. In the appleboy repo it does say linux docker container support only btw. Do we have any other ways to do this?

[Sinofage]

I was talking about the gateway firewall and not the machine, about the Linux docker container support it means it only runs on linux containers which are called ubuntu-latest, if you did it on for example windows-latest it would work that my interruption of what he meant only linux.

[shikhindahikar]

Well, searching online gets me ufw commands only. I tried with sudo netstat -tuln and it gives me

Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:631           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:32768           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:6379          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8080            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8090            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8070            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:7070            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 ::1:631                 :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::22                   :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::32768                :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::8086                 :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::8080                 :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::8090                 :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 :::8070                 :::*                    LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 ::1:6379                :::*                    LISTEN     
udp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*                          
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:631             0.0.0.0:*                          
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:50001           0.0.0.0:*                          
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:5353            0.0.0.0:*                          
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:59394           0.0.0.0:*                          
udp6       0      0 :::5353                 :::*                               
udp6       0      0 :::38676                :::*   

any specific command you would like me to checkout?

[Florian-Lankes]

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