One SSH key for the account that gets shared with each workspace on account

[zpthree]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Nothing is broke but I do see it as a problem. It's a pain to have to add an ssh key to every new workspace, add it to github, add it to production server, add it to staging server, etc.

Describe the behaviour you'd like

It would be great if you we had one ssh key for each account that got used on each workspace on the account so we only had to worry about one ssh key. Coder is a service similar to Gitpod and this is something that they have which is really nice.

Coder - SSH keys

Describe alternatives you've considered

Additional context

[akosyakov]

Is it in the context of VS Code desktop or generally for SSH access to Gitpod workspaces? We are working on new connectivity mode which does not require any tools/configurations anymore to connect. Will it be still useful? Basically you will be able to connect with ssh <workspaceId>:<workspaceSecret>@<workspaceHost>.

[zpthree]

@akosyakov what I'm talking about is an SSH key at the user account level that gets shared among all the workspaces created on that account. That way you can add the public key to your different servers (staging, production, etc.), git accounts, and any other account you might access via SSH.

Specifically, for the workflow that I use I have different deployment commands that depend on SSH access, so what I'm currently doing is adding the private key as a GitPod variable and then setting it in the workspace manually that way so that anytime I create a new workspace, I can interact with the different servers without having to create new SSH keys and adding the new public keys to the servers. I can just add one public key to the servers and be able to interact with those servers from any new workspace.

[tkislan]

@zpthree I actually already do this exact thing
It can be easily done through tasks:

tasks:
  - name: Setup SSH
    before: |
      ssh-keyscan github.com >> "${HOME}/.ssh/known_hosts"
      if [[ ! -z "${USER_SSH_KEY}" ]]; then
        echo "${USER_SSH_KEY}" | base64 --decode > "${HOME}/.ssh/id_rsa"
        chmod 0600 "${HOME}/.ssh/id_rsa"
      fi

[zpthree]

@tkislan Yeah this is what I'm doing now. It just seems like a cleaner solution would be for there to be a user SSH key tied to the user account that gets shared with all the user's workspaces. Doing it this way feels like a work around to me.

At a previous job we used Coder and this is how they do it.

From their docs:

The SSH Keys page is where you'll find the public key corresponding to the private key that Coder inserts automatically into your workspaces.

[axonasif]

@tkislan @zpthree you guys should be able to achieve that across all workspaces with the brand new dotfiles feature of Gitpod!

Just define your SSH key inside a variable at https://gitpod.io/variables/ with */* scope.

Later create a dotfiles repo and have a install.sh script with the automation you want. Make sure to chmod 755 install.sh before committing the file.

For detailed info about dotfiles, please see:
https://www.gitpod.io/docs/config-dotfiles

[zpthree]

@axonasif this is what we're both doing already. I'm currently manually adding a dotfiles repo and running an install.sh script that does this. The way Coder manages SSH keys is more painless. That's basically my point. It seems like a workaround to set it as a variable and then set it up with a script when Gitpod could automate that similar to how Coder does.

I'm mainly thinking about teams and other users here. I already have it set up so it doesn't bother me but it's not the most straightforward process.

[axonasif]

@zpthree okay cool, didn't know about that 😅. This indeed is a workaround for now until we have a straightforward approach.

[loujaybee]

Thanks for raising @zpthree, we definitely can see where you're coming. Whilst there would be some interactions with IDE, this feels like something that's implemented more on workspace / web app level. CC: @jldec

Removing from IDE inbox for now.