README.md

ssh-agent

GitHub action to load a key into in memory using a temp disk (tmpfs).

It can be used as an attempt to keep the private ssh key from being written to disk.

Usage

⚠️ Beware this action only works with passphrase-less key.

    - name: Load ssh key in agent
      id: agent
      uses: LeastAuthority/ssh-agent-action@v1
      with:
        private_key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}

Alternatively, assuming that the private_key is already available as a file in an existing tmpfs (e.g. using mount-tmpfs), the input can be the path to that file.

    - name: Load ssh key in agent
      id: agent
      uses: LeastAuthority/ssh-agent-action@v1
      with:
        private_key: /path/to/private_key

The action set a variable in the environment which can be used to find the socket to interact with the agent. By default, the name of the variable is SSH_AUTH_SOCK and the path to the socket is ${{ github.workspace }}/S.agent.ssh. Those can be changed respectively with the auth_sock_name and auth_sock_path inputs.

Without changing anything, most ssh client should now be able to use the key.

    - name: Test ssh connection
      run: |
        ssh -a -x -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no alice@server.example.com  whoami

The ssh-agent can be re-used inside a docker container.

    - name: Test ssh connectivity inside docker
      run: |
        docker run \
        -e SSH_AUTH_SOCK=${SSH_AUTH_SOCK} \
        -v ${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}:${SSH_AUTH_SOCK} \
        codingkoopa/openssh ssh -a -x -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no alice@server.example.com whoami