CI/CD Setup — Gitea Actions (Auto Deploy)

This doc covers how to set up automatic deployment to your production server whenever you push to main. The deploy runs deploy.sh (git pull && docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d --build).

Prerequisites

On Gitea

Gitea Actions must be enabled (check Site Administration → Configuration)
At least one Actions runner must be registered and online

On the Production Server

Docker and docker-compose installed
The repo already cloned at a known path
SSH access configured

Step 1 — Install a Gitea Actions Runner

If you don't already have a runner:

Download the runner binary from your Gitea instance or from the Gitea releases page
Register it:
```
./act_runner register --instance https://your-gitea-url --token <runner-token>
```
Get the token from: Gitea → Site Administration → Runners → Create Runner
Start the runner:
```
./act_runner daemon
```
Consider running it as a systemd service so it survives reboots.

Step 2 — Set Up SSH Key for Deployment

On your local machine or CI machine, generate a dedicated deploy key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "gitea-deploy" -f ~/.ssh/gitea_deploy

Copy the public key (gitea_deploy.pub) to your production server:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/gitea_deploy.pub user@your-server

Or manually append it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server.

Step 3 — Add Secrets in Gitea

Go to: your repo → Settings → Secrets → Add Secret

Secret Name	Value
`DEPLOY_HOST`	IP address or hostname of your server
`DEPLOY_USER`	SSH username (e.g. `ubuntu`, `root`)
`DEPLOY_SSH_KEY`	Full contents of the private key file
`DEPLOY_PORT`	SSH port (default: `22`)

Step 4 — Create the Workflow File

Create .gitea/workflows/deploy.yml in the repo root:

name: Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Deploy via SSH
        uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v1.0.3
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_HOST }}
          username: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_USER }}
          key: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_SSH_KEY }}
          port: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_PORT }}
          script: |
            cd /path/to/grateful-journal   # <-- update this path
            bash deploy.sh

Update the cd path to wherever the repo lives on your server.

Alternative — Runner Running Directly on the Server

If your Gitea Actions runner is already installed on the production server itself, you can skip SSH entirely and simplify the workflow:

name: Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Run deploy script
        run: |
          cd /path/to/grateful-journal   # <-- update this path
          bash deploy.sh

This is simpler and avoids managing SSH keys.

Verifying It Works

Push a commit to main
Go to your repo → Actions tab in Gitea
You should see the workflow run and each step's log output

If the runner isn't picking up jobs, check that the runner is online in Site Administration → Runners.

3.3 KiB Raw Blame History