Deploy docker container to digital ocean droplet from gitlab-ci - digital-ocean

Question

So here is what I want to do.
Push to master in git
Have gitlab-ci hear that push an start a pipeline
The pipeline builds code and pushes a docker container to the gitlab registry
The pipeline logs into a digital ocean droplet via ssh
The pipeline pulls the docker container from the gitlab registry
The pipeline starts the container
I can get up to step 4 no problem. But step 4 just fails every which way. I've tried the ssh key approach:
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-examples/ssh-private-key/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml
But that did not work.
So I tried a plain text password approach like this:
image: gitlab/dind:latest
before_script:
- apt-get update -y && apt-get install sshpass
stages:
- deploy
deploy:
stage: deploy
script:
- sshpass -p "mypassword" ssh root#x.x.x.x 'echo $HOME'
this version just exits with code 1 like so
Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/sys/fs/cgroup/systemd/name=systemd': Operation not permitted
/usr/local/bin/wrapdocker: line 113: 54 Killed docker daemon $DOCKER_DAEMON_ARGS &> /var/log/docker.log
Timed out trying to connect to internal docker host.
Is there a better way to do this? How can I at the very least access my droplet from inside the gitlab-ci build environment?

Answer 1

I just answered this related question: Create react app + Gitlab CI + Digital Ocean droplet - Pipeline succeeds but Docker container is deleted right after
Heres the solution he is using to get ssh creds set:
before_script:
## Install ssh agent (so we can access the Digital Ocean Droplet) and run it.
- apk update && apk add openssh-client
- eval $(ssh-agent -s)
## Write the environment variable value to the agent store, create the ssh directory and give the right permissions to it.
- echo "$SECRETS_DIGITAL_OCEAN_DROPLET_SSH_KEY" | ssh-add -
- mkdir -p ~/.ssh
- chmod 700 ~/.ssh
## Make sure that ssh will trust the new host, instead of asking
- echo -e "Host *\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n\n" > ~/.ssh/config
## Test it!
- ssh -t ${SECRETS_DIGITAL_OCEAN_DROPLET_USER}#${SECRETS_DIGITAL_OCEAN_DROPLET_IP} 'echo $HOME'
Code credit goes to https://stackoverflow.com/users/6655011/leonardo-sarmento-de-castro