Gitlab-ci-token user unable to clone repositories

Question

I am trying to setup a docker runner and successfully registered the runner with gitlab-ce. However, when the job runs it always fails with the follow:

Running with gitlab-ci-multi-runner 1.10.2 (d171b73)
Using Docker executor with image python:3.4 ...
Starting service postgres:latest ...
Pulling docker image postgres:latest ...
Waiting for services to be up and running...
Pulling docker image python:3.4 ...
Running on runner-b35ff618-project-96-concurrent-0 via toucan...
Cloning repository...
Cloning into '/builds/amrstratus/webportal'...
fatal: unable to access 'https://gitlab-ci-token:[email protected]/amrstratus/webportal.git/': Failed to connect to gitlab.xxxxxx port 443: Connection refused
ERROR: Build failed: exit code 1

I tried simply to clone the repository and got a similar error:

root@toucan:/tmp# git clone https://gitlab-ci-token:[email protected]/amrstratus/webportal.git/
Cloning into 'webportal'...
remote: HTTP Basic: Access denied
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://gitlab-ci-token:[email protected]/amrstratus/webportal.git/'

Access via https seems to work fine and everything else seems to work.

Any ideas? I am totally stuck.

System Details:

Debian 8 (Jessie)
GitLab 8.16.2
GitLab Shell 4.1.1
GitLab Workhorse v1.3.0
GitLab API v3
Git 2.10.2
Ruby 2.3.3p222
Rails 4.2.7.1
PostgreSQL 9.6.1

Answer 1

Note that there might be two issue.

Regarding the token itself (and fatal: Authentication failed ), see this thread

The CI token is now securely generated for each build. It's available in $CI_BUILD_TOKEN.
If you're cloning a different repository from .gitlab-ci.yml (like we were) your best bet is to use SSH.

Another solution is to use your personal private token:

git clone https://<username>:<private-token>@gitlab.anydomainhere.com/developers/<projectname>.git

(please realize this token gives access to all your projects)

The other issue is related to Docker: fatal: unable to access

You need to be sure you can communicate to your Gitlab instance (as in here or in issue 305).
And check the ownership as in this thread.