Doesn't matter if it is a private or public repository
Prerequisites
Here are the prerequisites required for this tutorial:
- A GitHub account
- Any Virtual Private Server, though i prefer DigitalOcean because of how easy it is to get started. If you can sign up on DigitalOcean with my Referral Link you get $100 in credit that can be spent in 60 days.
Some of the things we are going to cover in this tutorial.
- Generating an ssh key on your remote VPS
- Adding your generated public key to authorized keys
- Creating GitHub secret keys
- Configuring GitHub actions to auto-deploy your private/public repository
Step 1 - Open your terminal add ssh into your VPS
$ ssh user@hostname
$ cd ~/.ssh
Step 2 - Generate an ssh key
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "test@example.com"
- The email is the one you use on your GitHub account
Step 3: Press Enter repeatedly to set default name(Don't set a passphrase)
- If you do "ls" in your terminal you will see these two files ( id_rsa and id_rsa.pub)
Step 4 - Add a public key to authorized keys
$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
- Note: Weโre using >> so that the id_rsa.pub contents are appended to the end of the contents in the authorized_keys file, rather than override the contents in the authorized_keys.
Step 5 - Create GitHub secrets
$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa
- In your terminal run the above command select the output content and copy to your clipboard.
Head over to your GitHub repository you wish to configure,click on settings tab then in options menu click on and add the following secrets:
HOST: set the key to your hostname or ip address.
USERNAME: set the key to the username you use to SSH into your VPS.
SSHKEY: set the key to you copied contents from the command above.
PORT: set the key to 22
If you are still here, congratulations! we are almost done!
With the steps above completed, weโre left with only a single step more, namely, our .github/workflows/deploy.yml file.
Step 6 - Configure GitHub actions to auto-deploy your private/public repository
Assuming that you have the repo cloned locally on your machine, go ahead and create .github/workflows folder and inside that create a deploy.yml file
- Add the following contents to deploy.yml file
name: Deploy
on: [push]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v1
- name: Copy repository contents via scp
uses: appleboy/scp-action@master
env:
HOST: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
USERNAME: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
PORT: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
KEY: ${{ secrets.SSHKEY }}
with:
source: "."
target: "/var/www/mywebsite"
- name: Executing remote command
uses: appleboy/ssh-action@master
with:
host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
USERNAME: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
PORT: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
KEY: ${{ secrets.SSHKEY }}
script: ls
Notice that my remote command is just " ls ".if you are trying to auto deploy a React App or a Vue App, you could set your script command to Build command.
The Moment of Truth!
Commit the deploy.yml changes, and push to your repository.
It should build and push to the VPS without any errors.
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "deploy"
$ git push origin master
If you head over to your GitHub repository and click on actions menu you shall see this
Yay ! That's it, your repository is officially configured, now everytime you make changes and push to GitHub that action will run and auto deploy your website.
Thank you for reading!
Your comments are welcome
Latest comments (27)
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!
Thank you for the tutorial!
how do you add domain name for the folder?
Thanks a lot for this tutorial.
Everything's working but I can't setup script in this thing
I want something like this
cd word-dir && npm ibut gives npm ain't recognized
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
You just made my day! Works like a charm and thank you very much for that kind sir!
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.
remember to set permission to the destination folder in your VPS (i.e., /var/www/mywebsite) doing chwon
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
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 )
you saved my day!!
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!