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GitLab

Requirements

  • A private GitLab repository
  • A Valohai project
  • A tool that generates SSH keys. You can either use Valohai’s user interface for this or ssh-keygen

Recommended reading

Git for Data Science: What every data scientist should know about Git

Generate an SSH key pair

The easiest way to generate SSH key pair is to click the Generate new SSH key button in the Valohai web app. Go to Valohai and navigate to the repository settings in your Valohai Project through Settings > Repository.

Click on the “Generate SSH Key” button.

This will generate you a new SSH key pair and you can download/copy both the Public (.pub) and Private key (.pem).

Generate Key in Valohai

Generate an SSH key pair locally

If you want you can also use ssh-keygen to create a new SSH key pair.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f my-project-deploy-key

This will generate two files:

  • my-project-deploy-key.pub is the public key you add to GitHub.
  • my-project-deploy-key is the private key you add to Valohai.

Don’t include the keys in your version control

You should not include these keys in the version control. Anybody that gains access to the my-project-deploy-key file contents will have read access to your repository, so use appropriate caution.

Add the public key to GitLab

Find the my-project-deploy-key.pub the file we generated in the last section, and it should contain one line that starts with ssh-rsa AAAA.... This line is the public key that we’ll be adding to GitLab.

Navigate to the add deploy key page in your GitLab repository at Settings > Repository > Deploy Keys.

GitLab Key

If you can’t see this Deploy Keys menu, you are most likely lacking the permissions to add deploy keys so contact your GitLab admins.

  • Copy and paste the contents of my-project-deploy-key.pub into the Key field.
  • Give the deploy key an identifying Title such as Valohai.
  • Valohai doesn’t require write access, make sure that is off.

GitLab Key Paste

Add new deploy key

  • Copy and paste the contents of .pub into the Key field.
  • Give the deploy key an identifying Title such as Valohai.
  • Valohai doesn’t require write access, make sure that is off.

GitHub Deploy Key

Add the private key to Valohai

Go back to Valohai and navigate to the repository settings in your Valohai Project through Settings > Repository.

To make sure you get the correct repository URL, open GitLab in another tab. On GitLab, navigate to Code page and press Clone or download.

Make sure you have Clone with SSH active on the popup window. If it reads Clone with HTTPS, click the Use SSH button next to the text.

Then copy the text field with git@GitLab.com:<owner>/<repository>.git GitLab Clone

Next, paste the SSH URL (git@GitLab.com:<owner>/<repository>.git) into the URL field in the Valohai Repository settings.

  1. On your local machine, locate the private key file generated earlier: valohai-public_xxx.pem or my-project-deploy-key (without the .pub extension).
  2. Open the file, which should contain multiple lines starting with -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- or a similar header.
  3. Copy the entire contents of the .pem file or my-project-deploy-key.
  4. In the Valohai UI, locate the SSH private key field.
  5. Paste the copied private key contents into this field.

Paste SSH Key to Valohai

After you click Save, Valohai links the GitLab repository to the project and automatically fetches your code.

After you add new commits to your GitLab repository, remember to press the Fetch repository to update the code in Valohai.

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