What is the special gitlab-ci-token user?

docker gitlab gitlab-ci gitlab-ci-runner
user1447137 picture user1447137 · May 26, 2016 · Viewed 18.4k times · Source

The docs for gitlab's container registry (https://gitlab.com/help/container_registry/README.md) provide a config example with this instruction:

- docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_BUILD_TOKEN registry.example.com

and this explanation:

You have to use the credentials of the special gitlab-ci-token user with its password stored in $CI_BUILD_TOKEN in order to push to the Registry connected to your project. This allows you to automated building and deployment of your Docker images.

I cannot find any documentation about this special gitlab-ci-token user, nor about the $CI_BUILD_TOKEN var.

What is this special user? Is it automatically available? Does it have to be defined somewhere? What value should be given to the $CI_BUILD_TOKEN var?

Answer

Martin picture Martin · May 31, 2016

Gitlab acts as an authentication provider for the registry. gitlab-ci-token is a user automatically created for you. CI_BUILD_TOKEN is set automatically for each build by Gitlab-CI

Related questions

Gitlab CI runner configuration with cache on docker

I can't seem to get the cache or the artifacts to carry over between jobs in gitlab CI. I suspect it's something to do with my configuration, but I'm not sure what. I'm running gitlab and gitlab-ci-multirunner, both in docker, …

Read More
How can I let the gitlab-ci-runner DinD image cache intermediate images?

I have a Dockerfile that starts with installing the texlive-full package, which is huge and takes a long time. If I docker build it locally, the intermedate image created after installation is cached, and subsequent builds are fast. However, if …

Read More
Role of docker-in-docker (dind) service in gitlab ci

According to the official gitlab documentation, one way to enable docker build within ci pipelines, is to make use of the dind service (in terms of gitlab-ci services). However, as it is always the case with ci jobs running on …

Read More