Packer : how to avoid providing ssh_private_key_file in CI/CD pipeline? - packer

Question

I m running locally packer with ansible and terraform and it works fine.
Now i want to include these in my github actions ci/cd pipeline.
The packer hcl file is like this :
variable "do_token" {
type = string
default = env("DO_PAT")
}
variable "pvt_key" {
type = string
default = env("SSH_PVT_KEY")
}
packer {
required_plugins {
digitalocean = {
version = ">= 1.0.0"
source = "github.com/hashicorp/digitalocean"
}
}
}
source "digitalocean" "example" {
api_token = var.do_token
image = "debian-11-x64"
region = "ams3"
size = "s-1vcpu-1gb"
ssh_username = "root"
monitoring = true
snapshot_name = "packer-{{timestamp}}"
droplet_name = "packer-build"
ssh_key_id = id
ssh_private_key_file = path/to/my/file
}
build {
sources = ["source.digitalocean.example"]
provisioner "file" {
source = "publickeypath"
destination = "/tmp/publickey.pub"
}
provisioner "ansible-local" {
playbook_file = "../ansible/playbook.yml"
extra_arguments= [
"-vvv",
"--extra-vars",
"'ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python3'"
]
}
}
I would like to provide an environment variable for my ssh private key instead of a file so i dont need to upload it to github...Is it possible?
Also for the public key, is it possible to provide an environment variable and copy it to a file (instead of build provisioner file)
Thank you

Answer 1

The answer is simple : make a runner and echo "$ENV_VARIABLE" > fileyouwant
- name: Make ssh private key from secret
run: |
echo "$PVT_KEY" > sshkey
env:
PVT_KEY: ${{ secrets.PVT_KEY }}