cli: Cannot authenticate in my CI/CD CircleCI workflow

I’m trying to integrate netlify deploys to my CI/CD workflow in CircleCI but I am running into authentication issues.

I’ve set up the NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN env variable in the circleci project and i’ve also tried connecting to the container via SSH and setting it manually via export NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN=XXXX.

I’ve also tried using netlify deploy --auth xxxx.

This all results in:

Logging into your Netlify account...
Opening https://app.netlify.com/authorize?response_type=ticket&ticket=xxxx
---------------------------
Error: Unable to open browser automatically

Please open your browser & open the URL below to login:
https://app.netlify.com/authorize?response_type=ticket&ticket=xxxx
---------------------------

Why is this happening?

My project does not have netlify config files. What I want to do is create a new site for every PR.

This is the workflow:

  deploy-netlify-preview:
    docker:
      - image: circleci/node:10
    steps:
      - attach_workspace:
          at: ~/
      - run:
          name: "Set site name"
          command: site="EMPLOYERS-PR-${CIRCLE_PR_NUMBER}"
      - run:
          name: "Set Netlify Token env variable"
          command: export NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN=${NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN}
      - run:
          name: "Install Netlify CLI tools"
          command: sudo npm install -g netlify-cli
      - run:
          name: "Fetch sites from Netlify"
          command: sites="$(netlify sites:list)"
      - run:
          name: "Create site if it doesn't exist"
          command: |
            if [[ ! "$sites" =~ "$site" ]]
            then
              netlify sites:create --name "$site" -a ${NETLIFY_TEAM_SLUG}
            fi
      - run:
          name: "Deploy site"
          command: netlify deploy --prod -s "$site" --dir build

It actually hangs at “Fetch sites from Netlify” (stuck loading without error); When connecting to the container via SSH and trying to deploy manually, login message occurrs. If I printenv I can see NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN is set properly.

Env:

• Node: v10
• Docker image: circleci/node:10
• netlify-cli/2.11.23 linux-x64 node-v10.16.0