ssh gitlab to ec2

Hey 👋,

To connect your GitLab server installed on a virtual machine (like VirtualBox) to an EC2 instance via SSH:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/ssh-essentials-working-with-ssh-servers-clients-and-keys

You need to make sure that SSH is installed and running on the GitLab server (Ubuntu in your case).

• Check if SSH is installed:

  sudo systemctl status ssh
  

  If SSH is not installed, install it with:

  sudo apt-get install openssh-server
  

• Start SSH service (if not running):

  sudo systemctl start ssh
  sudo systemctl enable ssh
  

Generate an SSH key pair on your GitLab server. You will use this key to authenticate the connection with your EC2 instance.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

When prompted, press Enter to accept the default key location and provide a passphrase if desired. This will generate two files:

• ~/.ssh/id_rsa (private key)
• ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub (public key)

You need to add the public key from the GitLab server to the authorized_keys file on the EC2 instance.

• Copy the public key from your GitLab server to the clipboard:

  cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
  

  Copy the output.

• SSH into your EC2 instance:

  ssh -i your-aws-key.pem ec2-user@<EC2-IP>
  

• Add the public key from the GitLab server to the EC2 instance’s authorized keys:

  echo "your-public-key" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  

Make sure the permissions for the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file are set correctly:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

On your GitLab server, test the connection to the EC2 instance using SSH:

ssh ec2-user@<EC2-IP>

This should log you into the EC2 instance without requiring a password, as it uses the SSH key for authentication.

If you want to use the EC2 instance from GitLab (for example, in CI/CD pipelines), you can configure GitLab to use SSH for deployment:

1. Add the EC2 server as a remote repository in GitLab if needed.
2. Add your SSH key (id_rsa) to GitLab’s CI/CD environment or a GitLab project so it can SSH into the EC2 instance during deployment.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-continuous-deployment-pipeline-with-gitlab-on-ubuntu

Hope that this helps.

- Bobby