Git authentication in Chef

Question

When deploying an application with Chef, I've got the code base set to be cloned from a private github repository with the following resource:

git '/mnt/application' do
    repository '[e-mail]:organization/repository'

    reference 'master'
    action :sync

    user node.application.user
    group node.application.user
end

However, after scanning the documentation for the git resource, I can't see how you supply the key file for authentication. I'm also confused as to how to store this key in a data bag, as the file contains a bunch of new lines. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I went through same problem, Only thing I was missing was this command then everything went well:

GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i ~/.ssh/bitbucket_rsa"

Reference and for my whole steps can be found at my blog: http://www.sadafnoor.com/blog/simplest-way-to-write-your-chef-cookbook-that-git-clone-private-repo-using-bitbucket-deploy-key/

Answer 2

if you are in a linux distribution store your ssh key in <your home directory>/.ssh and add github.com to <your home directory>/.ssh/known_hosts

You can add github.com to known_hosts using the following command

ssh-keyscan -H github.com >> <your home directory>/.ssh/known_hosts

After doing this you can clone your repo using git resource of chef

Answer 3

You should try this cookbook https://github.com/poise/application_git. It solves the problem that you mentioned.

With this cookbook, you can use application_git resource, specifiyng the private key:

application_git '/srv/myapp' do
  repository '[e-mail]:organization/repository'
  deploy_key '/some/path/id_rsa'
end

Answer 4

Based on the hint by sadaf2605, this was the easiest way for me – I just had to make sure to set the correct user/group as well as turn off StrictHostKeyChecking:

git '/path/to/destination' do
  environment 'GIT_SSH_COMMAND' => 'ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i /path/to/private_key'
  repository '[e-mail]:your/repo.git'
  reference 'master'
  action :sync
  user 'vagrant'
  group 'vagrant'
end

Answer 5

ssh_wrapper "ssh -i /some/path/id_rsa"

In case someone comes across this, the above didn't work for me, I kept getting the error:

error: cannot run ssh -i /some/path/id_rsa: No such file or directory

What specifying ssh_wrapper does is it sets the GIT_SSH environment variable, and it turns out you can't provide parameters in the GIT_SSH environment variable (see Git clone with custom SSH using GIT_SSH error).

Instead, you would need to write your script to a file first, then set GIT_SSH to it.

So:

file "/some/path/git_wrapper.sh" do
  owner "your_user"
  mode "0755"
  content "#!/bin/sh\nexec /usr/bin/ssh -i /some/path/id_rsa \"$@\""
end

And change the git resource part to:

git "/opt/mysources/couch" do
  repository "git://git.apache.org/couchdb.git"
  reference "master"
  action :sync
  ssh_wrapper "/some/path/git_wrapper.sh"
end

Answer 6

We use the similar setup for Mercurial, but it should be the same with Git, I hope.

We use ssh keys to authenticate. The key is stored in encrypted databag (with newlines replaced by "\n"). First of all this private key is created on the node from databag.

git_key = Chef::EncryptedDataBagItem.load( "private_keys", "git_key" )
file "/some/path/id_rsa" do
  content git_key['private']
end

And then use it when connecting to git repository using ssh_wrapper:

git "/opt/mysources/couch" do
  repository "git://git.apache.org/couchdb.git"
  reference "master"
  action :sync
  ssh_wrapper "ssh -i /some/path/id_rsa" #the path to our private key file
end