DEV Community

How to setup continuous deployment of a website on a VPS using GitHub Actions

Bruce on June 08, 2020

Doesn't matter if it is a private or public repository Prerequisites Here are the prerequisites required for this tutorial: A GitHu...

Read full post

Jorge • May 2 '21

Thanks for the article this is what I was looking for! Just for update it, now Github gives you the chance to create Environment secrets. Well, you should create Repository Secrets to follow properly this tutorial. I made that mistake and at the beginning I couldn't make it work because I created ENV secrets instead of Repo ones.

Thanks!

Reinhart Andreas • Sep 23 '20

Thanks for the tutorial

I got error in Copy repository contents via scp step:

the log:

tar all files into /tmp/565278366/9sTHaiaED0.tar
scp file to server.
2020/09/23 18:26:16 error copy file to dest: **, error message: dial tcp: lookup ** on 168.63.129.16:53: no such host
drone-scp error: error copy file to dest: **, error message: dial tcp: lookup ** on 168.63.129.16:53: no such host

Any ideas? Thanks before :)

Azrin Sani • Oct 5 '21 • Edited

Hi, I just created an account to answer this question. I was going through this problem as well. For me it turned out that I have not enabled SSH keys on my VPS

in a nutshell, make sure you have "AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys" in your '/etc/ssh/sshd_config' file entrt

HOW IT FULLY WORKS:

Every device/service(such as github), will generate a private and public key pair using SSH. In this example we are using the actual vps to generate the private-public key pair and manually copy the private key into Github.
The private key stays on the device/service, but the public key is copied into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on your VPS
So when Github logs into you vps, it uses the private key to sign the handshake message. The VPS uses the public key to verify the signature and since it is 'Authorized' will allow login.
under /etc/ssh/sshd_config must uncomment 'AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys'
Finally don't forget to restart SSH => $ sudo service ssh restart

Reinhart Andreas • Oct 5 '21

Thanks for the help Bruce and Azrin!

Bruce • Jan 26 '21

Try using 168.63.129.16 as the host without port 53

Alex Lebed 🐧 • Jan 4 '21

doesn't work for some reason,

tar all files into /tmp/196564759/vw1MAdYY5a.tar
scp file to server.
2021/01/04 13:45:34 error copy file to dest: ***, error message: ssh: handshake failed: ssh: unable to authenticate, attempted methods [none publickey], no supported methods remain

any ideas what's wrong?

Bruce • Jan 26 '21

Repeat step 4 and 5

pianographe • Dec 6 '22

Hello!

Thanks for sharing.
I followed your tutorial but I get an error when I try to build deploy.yml:

scp file to server. create folder /discord-bots/pianobot drone-scp error: stty: 'standard input': Inappropriate ioctl for device

Do you please know how to fix this? Thank you!

Nimit Savant • Feb 8 '22

Everything's working but I can't setup script in this thing
I want something like this
cd word-dir && npm i
but gives npm ain't recognized

Nimit Savant • Feb 8 '22

So basically it's not detecting npm because nvm doesn't install node in /usr/local/bin/
ref: stackoverflow.com/questions/628630...

Sol: add this two lines in your script

export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm
source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

KhalO • Aug 12 '20

Thank you, useful action

Chrissie • Jun 8 '20

Nice Article

Geoffrey • Dec 11 '21 • Edited

Hello, I have a problem with the keyssh on my vps.

I have my key, but I can't do this on my vps?
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Do you have a solution?

I saw that it had something to be enabled in the ssh config? Thanks

Kenean • Dec 11 '21 • Edited

You can print the value of your public key on you your terminal and append it to the "authorized_keys" file by just copying it.

To do this run this command "cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub" on your terminal and if you saved your ssh keys on the default location you should be able to see your public key printed out.

Then just copy your public key on the terminal and open your "authorized_keys" file with the following command "nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys" this will create the file if doesn't already exist. now past the value, you copied and save the file. if there is already a value there just add yours at the end of the file

Also make sure your ssh-agent is runing and you have add your key. (follow instructuion above )

Ntwari Moise • Jun 9 '20

Great and very insightful👍

Marvio Rocha • Dec 8 '20

Thanks for the Tutorial :)

Olly • Jun 8 '20

Informative

Bruce • Jun 8 '20

Thank you

manish srivastava • Jun 8 '20

+100

Alexandre Diniz • Jul 15 '21

you saved my day!!

Roberts Ozoliņš • Jan 19 '22

You just made my day! Works like a charm and thank you very much for that kind sir!

Roberts Ozoliņš • Jan 19 '22

oh yeah i got one comment thought, i had to replace target: "/var/www/randomsite" to current user target: "~/www/randomsite" to get it working. And that's that.