How do you install debian packages from a GitLab package registry using a CI job token?

Question

I followed the instructions to set up a Debian package registry for my GitLab project.

• ✔️ I enabled the API
• ✔️ I created a distribution
• ✔️ I uploaded packages

Now I have a CI job that needs to pull these packages from the registry. I followed the instructions and tried this in my CI job:

curl --fail-with-body --header "Job-Token: ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}" "https://<my-gitlab-url>/api/v4/projects/45/debian_distributions/<my-codename>/key.asc" | gpg --dearmor | tee /usr/local/share/keyrings/<my-codename>-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
apt-get update

I also added this to the sources.list file:

deb [ signed-by=/usr/local/share/keyrings/<my-codename>-archive-keyring.gpg ] https://<my-gitlab-url>/api/v4/projects/45/packages/debian <my-codename> main

Finally, I created /etc/apt/auth.conf.d/sources.conf with:

echo "machine <my-gitlab-url> login gitlab-ci-token password ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}" > /etc/apt/auth.conf.d/sources.conf

However, when apt-get update actually runs, I get the following output:

Err:5 https://<my-gitlab-url>/api/v4/projects/45/packages/debian <my-codeame> InRelease
 401 Unauthorized [IP: 10.0.0.5 443]
Reading package lists...
E: Failed to fetch https://<my-gitlab-url>/api/v4/projects/45/packages/debian/dists/<my-codename>/InRelease 401 Unauthorized [IP: 10.0.0.5 443]
E: The repository 'https://<my-gitlab-url>/api/v4/projects/45/packages/debian <my-codename> InRelease' is not signed.

Based on the fact that it says Unauthorized, I think something is wrong with the authentication. Maybe the CI_JOB_TOKEN does not work. I tried doing this manually outside the CI using a personal access token and it did work.

Update

I added this to my .gitlab-ci.yml file

- echo "${CI_JOB_TOKEN:1}"
- echo "${CI_JOB_TOKEN::-1}"

so that I could snoop on the CI_JOB_TOKEN, then while the job was running I manually entered it in the /etc/apt/auth.conf.d/sources.conf file on my computer and apt-get update worked while the job was running. After the job ended, apt-get update no longer worked since the token expired (as expected). So the process works with the token, but for some reason it does not work in the CI...

Answer 1

My problem was that the CI_JOB_TOKEN was not getting passed properly into my job. I passed it into the build script, but I needed to also export it from there so that the rest of my workflow had access to the token.

I will vote to close this question because it's related to a mistake.