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I'm trying to automate the deployment of an SVN repository (with a web app) over multiple production servers, without installing any private key on the servers.

The SVN server is hosted on srv3, and the web app should be updated after each commit on srv3 and srv2, using an SVN post-commit hook.

I'm using those platforms/softwares :

  • Windows client
  • Debian server
  • PuTTY + Pageant
  • TortoiseSVN

The SSH agent forwarding is already working when I SSH to srv3 and SSH to srv2 right after :

Using username "adrien".
Authenticating with public key "adrien" from agent
Linux srv3 4.9.78-xxxx-std-ipv6-64 #2 SMP Wed Jan 24 10:27:15 CET 2018 x86_64

  Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)

  Linux srv3.xxx 4.9.78-xxxx-std-ipv6-64 #2 SMP Wed Jan 24 10:27:15 CET 2018                                                                                                                                                              x86_64 GNU/Linux


  Server        : xxx
  IPv4          : xxx
  IPv6          : xxx
  Hostname      : srv3.xxx

Last login: Tue Sep 24 09:18:10 2019 from 80.245.26.124

adrien@srv3:~$ ssh srv2
Linux srv2 4.9.149-xxxx-std-ipv6-64 #539070 SMP Thu Jan 10 08:31:30 UTC 2019 x86_64

  Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)

  Linux srv2 4.9.133-xxxx-std-ipv6-64 #413770 SMP Mon Oct 15 08:12:05 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux


  Server        : xxx
  IPv4          : xxx
  IPv6          : xxx
  Hostname      : srv2.xxx

Last login: Tue Sep 24 06:35:09 2019 from xxx
adrien@srv2:~$

The -v flag returns (I truncated the begining) :

debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: adrien
debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 277
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).
Authenticated to srv2.fr0.fr ([176.31.123.129]:7227).
debug1: channel 0: new [client-session]
debug1: Requesting [email protected]
debug1: Entering interactive session.
debug1: pledge: network
debug1: client_input_global_request: rtype [email protected] want_reply 0
debug1: Requesting authentication agent forwarding.
debug1: Sending environment.
debug1: Sending env LANG = en_US.UTF-8

However, when I make an SVN commit (the url is svn+ssh://srv3/var/svn/xxx and srv3 is a PuTTY alias), the SSH agent-forwarding is not working :
SSH agent-forwarding not working

The hooks/post-commit file is :

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/ssh -A -v srv2 "svn update /var/www/xxx"

First try

I tried overriding the TortoiseSVN SSH client (to add the -A flag) without any luck :
Overriding TortoiseSVN SSH client

Second try

I tried to manually define the SSH tunnel command in the TortoiseSVN config file :

[tunnels]
# I changed the SSH server to use a custom port
ssh = C:\\Program Files\\PuTTY\\plink.exe -ssh -P xxxx -v -A
C:\test>svn commit -m "test"
Looking up host "srv3.xxx" for SSH connection
Connecting to xxx port xxx
We claim version: SSH-2.0-PuTTY_Release_0.72
Remote version: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u4
Using SSH protocol version 2
No GSSAPI security context available
Doing ECDH key exchange with curve Curve25519 and hash SHA-256 (unaccelerated)
Server also has ssh-ed25519/ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 host keys, but we don't know any of them
Host key fingerprint is:
ssh-rsa 2048 20:9f:25:9a:36:6a:1d:2e:63:2b:01:82:16:53:86:d5
Initialised AES-256 SDCTR (AES-NI accelerated) outbound encryption
Initialised HMAC-SHA-256 (unaccelerated) outbound MAC algorithm
Initialised AES-256 SDCTR (AES-NI accelerated) inbound encryption
Initialised HMAC-SHA-256 (unaccelerated) inbound MAC algorithm
Pageant is running. Requesting keys.
Pageant has 1 SSH-2 keys
Using username "adrien".
Trying Pageant key #0
ASending Pageant's response
uthenticating with public key "adrien" from agent
Access granted
Opening main session channel
Opened main channel
Agent forwarding enabled
Started a shell/command
Sending        main.php
Transmitting file data .done
Committing transaction...
Committed revision 28717.

Warning: post-commit hook failed (exit code 255) with output:
OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u4, OpenSSL 1.0.2q  20 Nov 2018
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 56: Deprecated option "useroaming"
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 60: Applying options for srv*
debug1: Connecting to srv2.xxx [xxx] port xxx.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ed25519 type -1
debug1: key_load_public: No such file or directory
debug1: identity file /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u4
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u4
debug1: match: OpenSSH_7.4p1 Debian-10+deb9u4 pat OpenSSH* compat 0x04000000
debug1: Authenticating to srv2.xxx:xxx as 'adrien'
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: algorithm: curve25519-sha256
debug1: kex: host key algorithm: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256
debug1: kex: server->client cipher: [email protected] MAC: <implicit> compression: none
debug1: kex: client->server cipher: [email protected] MAC: <implicit> compression: none
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 SHA256:SSkilAGRvuD2YbreS/Hx249uhxOO/ql6QB1sqDZwW3o
debug1: Host '[srv3.xxx]:xxx' is known and matches the ECDSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/adrien/.ssh/known_hosts:1
debug1: rekey after 134217728 blocks
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: rekey after 134217728 blocks
debug1: SSH2_MSG_EXT_INFO received
debug1: kex_input_ext_info: server-sig-algs=<ssh-ed25519,ssh-rsa,ssh-dss,ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521>
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: /home/adrien/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Trying private key: /home/adrien/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Trying private key: /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ecdsa
debug1: Trying private key: /home/adrien/.ssh/id_ed25519
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).

2019-10-24 : additional info

I added those commands to the post-commit hook :

echo "*** whoami" >> /tmp/log
whoami >> /tmp/log
echo "*** printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK" >> /tmp/log
printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK >> /tmp/log
echo "*** ls -al /tmp/ssh-*" >> /tmp/log
ls -al /tmp/ssh-* >> /tmp/log

The result is :

*** whoami
adrien
*** printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK
*** ls -al /tmp/ssh-*
total 8
drwx------  2 adrien adrien 4096 Oct 24 07:37 .
drwxrwxrwt 12 root   root   4096 Oct 24 07:37 ..
srwxr-xr-x  1 adrien adrien    0 Oct 24 07:37 agent.31456

So, it looks like the agent socket is created but not defined in SSH_AUTH_SOCK !

2019-10-26 : Third Try

I remplaced the commands in the post-commit hook with instructions to start the ssh-agent :

eval $(ssh-agent -s)
ssh-add

echo "*** whoami" >> /tmp/log
whoami >> /tmp/log
echo "*** printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK" >> /tmp/log
printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK >> /tmp/log
echo "*** ssh-add -l" >> /tmp/log
ssh-add -l >> /tmp/log

Unfortunately, this is not working... SSH_AUTH_SOCK is now defined, but the agent still has no keys :

*** whoami
adrien
*** printenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK
/tmp/ssh-sZDW2KCwgdQ5/agent.21063
*** ssh-add -l
The agent has no identities.

ssh-add -l in a regular SSH session shows :

2048 SHA256:GQu880UuPXT89G00Xv8JDNHl0BzEkLcY9Gxt/CHxCtw adrien (RSA)

I'm stuck here and don't know what to try next.
Any help would be appreciated !

1 Answer 1

0
ADD the below code in your ~/.bashrc file
SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
function start_agent {
echo "Initialising SSH agent..."
(umask 066; /usr/bin/ssh-agent > "${SSH_ENV}")
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
/usr/bin/ssh-add ~/.ssh/<YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY>;
} # Source SSH settings, if applicable
if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
start_agent;
}
else
start_agent;
fi

& Run your ssh+svn commit again after logout and login your terminal. This will use your ssh agent for ssh next time and confirm if it works.

2
  • I tried but got an error on next login : -sh: /home/adrien/.bashrc: line 122: syntax error near unexpected token ;' -sh: /home/adrien/.bashrc: line 122: /usr/bin/ssh-add ~/.ssh/<YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY>;' Sep 27, 2019 at 9:15
  • I think I had to replace <YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY> with my private key path ? But the goal of agent-forwarding is to avoid installing my private key on the server. Sep 27, 2019 at 9:20

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