SSH Shell Access to your GitHub Actions VM

Have you ever had a GitHub Actions fail and wish you could just quickly log in to the build vm to troubleshoot? Well, good news! That's what you can do with this Actions! with just a few lines of yaml you can get a shell to your runner vm. For more details also see: https://www.border0.com/blogs/ssh-shell-access-to-your-github-actions-vm

Quickstart

To get started with this action, you'll need to register a Border0 account, and generate an admin token by going to Border0 Admin Portal -> Team -> Service Accounts, create a new service account, then create a token with Admin permissions for the service account, and then add the token in your GitHub repository's secrets. More on service accounts here: https://docs.border0.com/docs/service-accounts

name: My Workflow
on: [push]
jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup Border0 action
        uses: borderzero/gh-action@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.BORDER0_ADMIN_TOKEN }}
          background-mode: true

      - name: Your steps here
        run: echo border0

      - name: Clean-up for Border0
        if: always()
        uses: borderzero/gh-action@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.BORDER0_ADMIN_TOKEN }}
          clean-up-mode: true

Once the Setup Border0 action has been run, a Border0 SSH socket will be created. It will then appear on the Sockets page in the Border0 Admin Portal.

The name of the SSH debug socket will follow this naming convention:

{github-org-name}-{github-repo-name}-{github-workflow-run-id}-{github-workflow-run-attempt}

Automatically trigger on failure

Add if: ${{ failure() }} to your Border0 action, and the action will only be triggered when previous steps in the job fail. NOTE: Be sure to configure a wait

name: My Workflow
on: [push]
jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup Border0 action
        if: ${{ failure() }}
        uses: borderzero/gh-action@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.BORDER0_ADMIN_TOKEN }}
          wait-for: 15

Slack notification

Add slack-webhook-url to the with section of the Border0 action step. Doing so will enable the action to send you a Slack message when the Border0 action is triggered.

name: My Workflow
on: [push]
jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup Border0 action
        if: ${{ failure() }}
        uses: borderzero/gh-action@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.BORDER0_ADMIN_TOKEN }}
          slack-webhook-url: ${{ secrets.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL }}
          wait-for: 15

Manually trigger for debug

Add the workflow_dispatch configuration and the if: ${{ github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && inputs.debug }} condition to the Border0 action. This will allow you to manually trigger the Border0 action when the debug input is set to true.

name: My Workflow
on:
  push:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      debug:
        type: boolean
        description: Manually trigger debugging mode with Border0 for the GitHub workflow run
        required: false
        default: false
jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Setup Border0 action
        if: ${{ github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && inputs.debug }}
        uses: borderzero/gh-action@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.BORDER0_ADMIN_TOKEN }}
          wait-for: 15