blog/_posts/2018-12-25-static-websites-automatic-deployment-with-gitea-an-example-with-jekyll.md

title	date	last_modified_at	url	layout	category	image	description
Static websites automatic deployment with Gitea, an example with Jekyll	2018-12-25	2023-01-29	static-websites-automatic-deployment-with-gitea-an-example-with-jekyll	post	Tutorials	/img/blog/static-websites-automatic-deployment-with-gitea-an-example-with-jekyll_1.png	Little write-up about static websites automatic deployment with Gitea hooks, example with Jekyll

Introduction

As this blog is no longer hosted on GitHub Pages, I needed a quick and lite way to perform continuous deployment on a Web server.

Available on my new Gitea instance, I thought about webhooks at first.
On the other hand, I didn't want to deploy a webhook server dedicated to static deployment, nor a CI/CD solution (as Drone) for this specific need.

So this is a short write-up (only) about SSH, Bash scripts and Jekyll usage, if you want to achieve something similar.

Here, I assume that your Gitea instance and your Web server are running separately.

The procedure

On the Gitea container

Before anything else, impersonate the git user and generate a key pair to allow SSH authentication on the Web server :

{% highlight bash %} su - git ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_repository cat ~/.ssh/id_repository.pub

Copy this public key for later !

ssh-keyscan -H web.server.ip.address > /home/git/.ssh/known_hosts 2> /dev/null {% endhighlight %}

Now you'll have to add a new hook to your repository settings.

Modify the below script to fit your needs, and add it as a post-receive hook :

{% highlight bash %} #!/usr/bin/env bash

Load the SSH key into an SSH agent and run the deployment before killing the SSH agent

nohup bash -c '
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" &&
trap "ssh-agent -k" EXIT &&
ssh-add -t 60 /home/git/.ssh/id_repository &&
ssh root@web.server.ip.address "/path/to/deployment.sh repository"
' > /dev/null 2>&1 &

echo "Automatic deployment successfully started !" {% endhighlight %}

On the Web server

Open a root shell on your Web server and let's generate a deploy key for the www-data user, allowing it to pull from the Gitea repository :

{% highlight bash %} su - www-data -l -s /bin/bash ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_deploy cat ~/.ssh/id_deploy.pub

Copy the public key here !

{% endhighlight %}

Now you can go to your Gitea repository settings, and add the new deploy key generated :

Still as www-data, you can try your deploy key at this moment :

{% highlight bash %} git clone <your.repository.information> /var/www/repository/ {% endhighlight %}

---

Finally, you will also need a new script (/path/to/deployment.sh) :

{% highlight bash %} #!/usr/bin/env bash

Repository deployment

if ; then su - www-data -l -s /bin/bash -c '
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" &&
trap "ssh-agent -k" EXIT &&
ssh-add -t 60 ~/.ssh/id_deploy &&
git -C /var/www/repository/ pull &&
JEKYLL_ENV=production jekyll build -s /var/www/repository/ -d /var/www/repository/_site/
'

Another website ? Sure.

elif ; then # Your own logic over here...

fi {% endhighlight %}

Don't forget to :

{% highlight bash %} chmod +x /path/to/deployment.sh {% endhighlight %}

Finally, you'll have to authorize the remote git user (the one likely running Gitea) to execute the script above with a specific argument (/root/.ssh/authorized_keys), set the public key copied at the first step of this guide :

{% highlight bash %}

Static websites deployment

from="your.gitea.ip.address",command="/path/to/deployment.sh repository" ssh-rsa AAAA... git@gitea-container from="your.gitea.ip.address",command="/path/to/deployment.sh another-website" ssh-rsa AAAA... git@gitea-container

...

{% endhighlight %}

Conclusion

As always, improvements are welcome below !

And guess what ? This blog post has been automatically deployed 😎