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GitHub Action for executing remote SSH commands.

This project is built using Golang and drone-ssh. 🚀

See action.yml for more detailed information.

Executing remote SSH commands.

name: remote ssh command
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    name: Build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: executing remote ssh commands using password
        uses: appleboy/[email protected]
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
          username: linuxserver.io
          password: ${{ secrets.PASSWORD }}
          port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
          script: whoami

output:

======CMD======
whoami
======END======
linuxserver.io
===============================================
✅ Successfully executed commands to all hosts.
===============================================

Make sure to follow the below steps while creating SSH Keys and using them. The best practice is create the SSH Keys on local machine not remote machine. Login with username specified in Github Secrets. Generate a RSA Key-Pair:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 200 -C "[email protected]"

Add newly generated key into Authorized keys. Read more about authorized keys here.

cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'

cat .ssh/id_ed25519.pub | ssh b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'

Copy Private Key content and paste in Github Secrets.

Before copying the private key, install clip command as shown below:

# Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install xclip

copy the private key:

# macOS
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa
# Ubuntu
xclip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa

# macOS
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
# Ubuntu
xclip < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

See the detail information about SSH login without password.

A note from one of our readers: Depending on your version of SSH you might also have to do the following changes:

• Put the public key in .ssh/authorized_keys2
• Change the permissions of .ssh to 700
• Change the permissions of .ssh/authorized_keys2 to 640

If you are currently using OpenSSH and are getting the following error:

ssh: handshake failed: ssh: unable to authenticate, attempted methods [none publickey]

Make sure that your key algorithm of choice is supported. On Ubuntu 20.04 or later you must explicitly allow the use of the ssh-rsa algorithm. Add the following line to your OpenSSH daemon file (which is either /etc/ssh/sshd_config or a drop-in file under /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/):

CASignatureAlgorithms  ssh-rsa

Alternatively, ed25519 keys are accepted by default in OpenSSH. You could use this instead of rsa if needed:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 200 -C "[email protected]"

- name: executing remote ssh commands using password
  uses: appleboy/[email protected]
  with:
    host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
    username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
    password: ${{ secrets.PASSWORD }}
    port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
    script: whoami

- name: executing remote ssh commands using ssh key
  uses: appleboy/[email protected]
  with:
    host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
    username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
    key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
    port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
    script: whoami

- name: multiple command
  uses: appleboy/[email protected]
  with:
    host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
    username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
    key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
    port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
    script: |
      whoami
      ls -al

- name: file commands
  uses: appleboy/[email protected]
  with:
    host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
    username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
    key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
    port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
    script_path: scripts/script.sh

  - name: multiple host
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
-     host: "foo.com"
      host: "foo.com,bar.com"
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      script: |
        whoami
        ls -al

The default value of port is 22.

  - name: multiple host
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
-     host: "foo.com"
      host: "foo.com:1234,bar.com:5678"
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      script: |
        whoami
        ls -al

  - name: multiple host
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
      host: "foo.com,bar.com"
      sync: true
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      script: |
        whoami
        ls -al

  - name: pass environment
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    env:
      FOO: "BAR"
      BAR: "FOO"
      SHA: ${{ github.sha }}
    with:
      host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      envs: FOO,BAR,SHA
      script: |
        echo "I am $FOO"
        echo "I am $BAR"
        echo "sha: $SHA"

Inside env object, you need to pass every environment variable as a string, passing Integer data type or any other may output unexpected results.

 --------         ----------        ----------- 
| Laptop | <-->  | Jumphost | <--> | FooServer |
 --------         ----------        ----------- 

in your ~/.ssh/config, you will see the following.

Host Jumphost
  HostName Jumphost
  User ubuntu
  Port 22
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/keys/jump_host.pem

Host FooServer
  HostName FooServer
  User ubuntu
  Port 22
  ProxyCommand ssh -q -W %h:%p Jumphost

  - name: ssh proxy command
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
      host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      proxy_host: ${{ secrets.PROXY_HOST }}
      proxy_username: ${{ secrets.PROXY_USERNAME }}
      proxy_key: ${{ secrets.PROXY_KEY }}
      proxy_port: ${{ secrets.PROXY_PORT }}
      script: |
        mkdir abc/def
        ls -al

The purpose of the passphrase is usually to encrypt the private key. This makes the key file by itself useless to an attacker. It is not uncommon for files to leak from backups or decommissioned hardware, and hackers commonly exfiltrate files from compromised systems.

  - name: ssh key passphrase
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
      host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      passphrase: ${{ secrets.PASSPHRASE }}
      script: |
        whoami
        ls -al

Setting up SSH host fingerprint verification can help to prevent Person-in-the-Middle attacks. Before setting this up, run the command below to get your SSH host fingerprint. Remember to replace ed25519 with your appropriate key type (rsa, dsa, etc.) that your server is using and example.com with your host.

In modern OpenSSH releases, the default key types to be fetched are rsa (since version 5.1), ecdsa (since version 6.0), and ed25519 (since version 6.7).

ssh example.com ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | cut -d ' ' -f2

Now you can adjust you config:

  - name: ssh key passphrase
    uses: appleboy/[email protected]
    with:
      host: ${{ secrets.HOST }}
      username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
      key: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
      port: ${{ secrets.PORT }}
      fingerprint: ${{ secrets.FINGERPRINT }}
      script: |
        whoami
        ls -al

See the issue comment about interactive vs non interactive shell. Thanks @kocyigityunus for the solution.

Basically, if you are running a command in a non interactive shell, like ssh-action, on many linux distros,

/etc/bash.bashrc file has a specific command that returns only, so some of the files didn't run and some specific commands doesn't add to path,

# /etc/bash.bashrc
# System-wide .bashrc file for interactive bash(1) shells.

# To enable the settings / commands in this file for login shells as well,
# this file has to be sourced in /etc/profile.

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return`

just comment out the line that returns early and everything should work fine, or you can use the real paths of the commands that you would like to use.

We would love for you to contribute to appleboy/ssh-action, pull requests are welcome!

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License