This tutorial shows how to deploy any app on a Linux server (e.g. Linode, Digital Ocean e.t.c)

Requirements.

• Linux Server
• GitHub Repository

Step 1 - Setup up SSH on Remote Server

To achieve this, you need to create an SSH key for GitHub Action. Login to your server.

Generate SSH by entering ssh-keygen, enter a new name if you have an existing key i.e. .ssh/github_action, continue , and you should get a response like a sample below.

One final thing here is to cp github_action authorized_keys and then cat github_action.pub

Step 2 - Setup GitHub Action

Firstly, on the code repository, click on the Settings tab, click on the Secret -> Action -> New secret for

• SSH_HOST e.g. 187.9.0.9.9.9
• SSH_KEY e.g. (github_action)
• SSH_USERNAME e.g. root (or user of the created SSH)

Note: Copy the SSH public key i.e. github_action.pub and paste the value for SSH_KEY.

Click the action tab, then set up a workflow yourself.

You can give it any name you want, for this article, I will be using deployment.yml

# This is a basic workflow to help you get started with Actions

name: CI/CD Deployment to Remote Server

# Controls when the workflow will run
on:
  # Triggers the workflow on push or pull request events but only for the "main" branch
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:
  # This workflow contains a single job called "deploy"
  deploy:
    # The type of runner that the job will run on
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    # Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
    steps:
      # Checks out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
      - uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v0.1.2
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}
          key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
          username: ${{ secrets.SSH_USERNAME }}
          script_stop: true
          script: |
            cd /var/www/html/
            git pull origin main
            # more command or scripts(shell) here            

For more documentation on the workflow, check out appleboy/ssh-action

In a case when you need to run a sudo command on the remote server, add an ENV variable by clicking Settings tab, click on the Secret -> Action -> New secret

• USER_PASSWORD i.e. your sudo password

then run the command like this echo $USER_PASSWORD | sudo -S systemctl start nginx

The -S (stdin) option causes sudo to read the password from the standard input instead of the terminal device.

Read more here

....
- uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v0.1.2
    env:
      GO_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.USER_PASSWORD }}
      MORE_VALUES: "....."
    with:
      ....
      envs: USER_PASSWORD,MORE_VALUES
      script: |
                echo $USER_PASSWORD | sudo -S systemctl start nginx

Step 3 - Commit and Run the Action

If the steps above are properly followed, the action should run each time you commit and push to main or merge a PR to main.

Happy Coding 👨🏾‍💻

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