Unable to reach internet from github actions virtual environment

[OptiMous28]

Description
Despite no changes being made to my github actions, my actions can no longer deploy to my server, Upon further investigation, i found that the virtual environment is no longer able to reach my target server. I went and inspected my server and everything seemed fine. I then decided to run some connectivity tests from the github action to google to see if it can reach that. Unfortunately it wasn't even able to reach that.

Current runner version: '2.273.0'
Operating System
  Ubuntu
  18.04.5
  LTS
Virtual Environment
  Environment: ubuntu-18.04
  Version: 20200817.1
  Included Software: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/blob/ubuntu18/20200817.1/images/linux/Ubuntu1804-README.md

Ping from github action:

ping -c 10 google.com
PING google.com (172.217.2.110) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- google.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 9199ms

Area for Triage:
Git

Question, Bug, or Feature?:
Bug

Virtual environments affected

• macOS 10.15
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Windows Server 2016 R2
• Windows Server 2019

Expected behavior
Previously, i was able to reach the internet and deploy to my server. I expect the virtual environment to have outbound connectivity to the internet.

Actual behavior
github action virtual environment has no access to the internet.

Repro steps
A description with steps to reproduce the issue. If your have a public example or repo to share,
please provide the link.

Ignore the bad indentations on below workflow file, copy and pasting didn't work too great. Simply run any github action using ubuntu-latest or v20 and you'll find no connectivity to the internet.

name: CI/CD

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]

jobs:
deploy:
    name: Deploy
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          ref: 'master'
      - name: Test Connectivity
        run: |
          ping -c 10 google.com

[andy-mishechkin]

Hello, @mous2890
GitHub runners are placed in Azure. Ping doesn't work in azure by design.
May you provide some details about your issue - what network operation you want to perform on your server from Github Actions ?
Also would you please provide the link to your workflow, where you've got the network issue ?

Thank you.

[OptiMous28]

Hi @andy-mishechkin

Thanks for your time looking into this and following this up with me.

This is a private repo so unsure how you'd be able to see the action but here's the link anyway:
https://github.com/mous2890/kick-about/runs/1047592259?check_suite_focus=true

The network operation that is currently failing is ssh'ing to the target server: kick-about.uk

nslookup kick-about.uk
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   kick-about.uk
Address: 87.81.151.107

I use ansible to automate my deployment from github actions. Previously, this has always worked and successfully deployed my application a number of times using the same actions workflow. The error you see below is from the latest run (link above) which is the ansible output.

Job: Deploy

Log from the job:

Run pipeline/cd.sh deploy-app
Using /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as config file

PLAY [prod] ********************************************************************

TASK [Gathering Facts] *********************************************************
fatal: [autobots]: UNREACHABLE! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Failed to connect to the host via ssh: ssh: connect to host kick-about.uk port 22: Connection timed out", "unreachable": true}

PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
autobots                   : ok=0    changed=0    unreachable=1    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0   

##[error]Process completed with exit code 4.

If you need anything else, please let me know! Thanks.

[al-cheb]

@mous2890, Could you please use site https://sshcheck.com/ to check ssh connection to the kick-about.uk host?

[OptiMous28]

Hi @al-cheb

I tested just now and received the same result as you which is odd. The server is untouched for months.

I ran another test on another website which had the same result as well.

Possibly my machine was affected by the outage and hasn't recovered. I'll close down this issue and investigate further from my end.

Thank you for your help!

[aquibbaig]

@mous2890 Any updates on this? I am facing a similar issue where the ping command is not working. I installed the ping command before this step and it always returns 100% packet loss. (resulting in exit code 1)

Run ping -c 4 www.google.co.in
PING www.google.co.in (172.217.7.163) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- www.google.co.in ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3079ms

[catthehacker]

@aquibbaig

GitHub runners are placed in Azure. Ping doesn't work in azure by design.

[aquibbaig]

Hi @catthehacker! Apologies for the late reply. Do you think using "self-hosted runners" could be the way to go?

[maxim-lobanov]

@aquibbaig , it depends on the place where your self-hosted runner will be located.
If it is located in Azure, you will face with the same issue.
If it is located anywhere outside Azure or even physical machine, it should work.

[aquibbaig]

@maxim-lobanov I see, thanks a ton!