Simple SSH

Simple SSH is a java library that currently supports the following capabilities :

• Run a command against a Remote UNIX Host.
• Upload/Download files/folders from/to a Remote UNIX Host.

Simple SSH works on password based and passwordless authentication (i.e., connecting to a remote host without being prompted for a password.). So either a passwordless setup needs to have been completed against a remote host before interacting with it or you would need to have the credentials available.

In order to learn how to setup passwordless access to a remote host, please refer Here

Pre-requisites

Simple SSH requires that you use :

• JDK 8.

How to use.

Simple SSH is a Maven artifact. In order to consume it, you merely need to add the following as a dependency in your pom file.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.rationaleemotions</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-ssh</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.2</version>
</dependency>

Building a ssh aware object.

In order to start interacting with a Remote UNIX Host, we need to create an ssh aware object as below :

SshKnowHow ssh = builder.connectTo("myUnixBox").build();

Here myUnixBox represents the name of the Remote UNIX Host. By default this attempts to connect to the Remote UNIX Host as the currently logged-in user.

If we need to disable host file checking (i.e., disable validating the finger print of the Remote UNIX Host against the local ~/.ssh/known_hosts), we can do it as below :

SshKnowHow ssh = builder.connectTo("myUnixBox").includeHostKeyChecks(false).build();

(Host File checking is enabled by default and its one of the ways in which UNIX helps you safe-guard your ssh access.)

In case we would like to connect to a particular Remote UNIX Host as a different user (say for e.g., as a service account), we can do it as below :

SshKnowHow ssh = builder.connectTo("myUnixBox").asUser("service_account").build();

Building a ssh user information.

If we would like to provide information such as the location of the .ssh folder, the location of the user's private keys (id_dsa (or) id_rsa), we can do it as below :

SSHUser sshUser = new SSHUser.Builder()
    .forUser("service_account")
    .withSshFolder(new File("/shared/.ssh"))
    .usingPassphrase("secret-word")
    .usingPrivateKey(new File("/shared/.ssh/id_rsa"))
    .build();
SshKnowHow ssh = new ExecutionBuilder()
    .connectTo("myUnixBox")
    .includeHostKeyChecks(false)
    .usingUserInfo(sshUser)
    .build();

Incase you would like to work with the password for a user, here's how the sample code would look like:

SSHUser sshUser = new SSHUser.Builder()
    .forUser("service_account")
    .withPasswordAs("my_password")
    .build();

Simple SSH by default falls back to using bash shell. In-case you would like to fall back to using a different shell, you can do it as below :

SshKnowHow remoteSsh = new ExecutionBuilder()
            .connectTo("myUnixBox")
            .includeHostKeyChecks(false)
            .usingShell(Shells.TCSH)
            .build();

What can you do with an ssh object.

Executing commands.

Once you have created an ssh object, you can execute a command against a Remote UNIX Host as below :

ExecResults results = ssh.executeCommand("whoami");

• And then access the command output via results.getOutput() (or)
• check if there were any errors via results.getError() (or)
• check the return code of the executed command via results.getReturnCode()

In-case you need to pass in an environment variables and then execute a command, it can be done as below:

EnvVariable env = new EnvVariable("foo", "bar");
ExecResults results = ssh.executeCommand("whoami", env);

Here's how you pass in one or more environment variables and a folder from wherein the execution should happen, along with the command to execute :

EnvVariable env1 = new EnvVariable("foo", "bar");
EnvVariable env2 = new EnvVariable("blah", "blah-blah");
ExecResults results = ssh.executeCommand("pwd", "/usr/bin", env1, env2);

Upload/download files.

Here's how to perform uploading files to a Remote UNIX Host: (Here we are uploading two files to the remote directory ~/target/destination/ in the Remote UNIX Host)

File[] files = new File[]{
            new File("src/test/resources/foo.txt"),
            new File("src/test/resources/bar.txt")
        };
ExecResults reply = ssh.uploadFile("~/target/destination/", files);

Here's how to perform downloading files from a Remote UNIX Host: (Here we are downloading two files to the local directory src/test/resources/)

File dir = new File("src/test/resources/");
String[] remoteFiles = new String[] {
                "~/artifacts/foo.txt",
                "~/artifacts/bar.txt"
            };
ExecResults result = ssh.downloadFile(dir, remoteFiles);

Upload/download folder.

Here's how to perform uploading a folder to a Remote UNIX Host: (Here we are uploading a folder to the remote directory ~/target/destination/ in the Remote UNIX Host)

ExecResults results =ssh.uploadDirectory(new File("src/test/resources/upload"), "~/target/destination/");

Here's how to perform downloading a folder from a Remote UNIX Host: (Here we are downloading a remote directory named ~/download to the local directory src/test/resources )

ExecResults results = ssh.downloadDirectory(new File("src/test/resources"), "~/download");

How to do SSH tunnelling

Here's how you can resort to performing SSH tunnelling:

//Lets say we first need to ssh "centos.somedomain" and only from "centos.somedomain" can we ssh into "ubuntu.anotherdomain" machine
//Here's how it can be done.
String centos = "centos.somedomain"; //First target
String ubuntu = "ubuntu.anotherdomain"; //The machine to which we would like port forwarding to be carried out
SshKnowHow ssh = new ExecutionBuilder().connectTo(centos).build();
SSHHost tunnelHost = new SSHHost();
tunnelHost.setHostname(ubuntu);
int fwdedPort = findRandomOpenPortOnAllLocalInterfaces();
tunnelHost.setPort(fwdedPort);
ssh.enableTunnellingTo(tunnelHost);
SshKnowHow anotherSsh = new ExecutionBuilder().connectTo("localhost").onPort(fwdedPort).build();
ExecResults results = anotherSsh.executeCommand("ls -ltr"); //This will be executed on "ubuntu.anotherdomain"

//One sample way of figuring out a random free port locally can be as below
int findRandomOpenPortOnAllLocalInterfaces() throws IOException {
    try (java.net.ServerSocket socket = new java.net.ServerSocket(0)) {
        return socket.getLocalPort();
    }
}

Explicit closing of connections

If you are using this library in scenarios that doesn't involve a TestRunner such as TestNG (or) JUnit but resort to consuming this library via a main() method, then there can be chances that the program does not exit. This is mainly due to the fact that behind the scenes the JSch library (which is what is being used as the ssh backbone) does not kill its background threads until the connections are explicitly closed. That can be done by invoking :

SshKnowHow ssh = new ExecutionBuilder().connectTo(centos).build();
//ssh operations related code goes here.
//finally before we end the program lets close the connections
ssh.closeConnections();