SSHClient Class

Properties   Methods   Events   Configuration Settings   Errors  

The SSHClient class provides client-side SSH protocol functionality.

Syntax

class secureblackboxlite.SSHClient

Remarks

Use SSHClient to establish terminal-like connections to remote systems and run commands remotely. The component supports most of third-party implementations out there, and is capable of working in "shell" and "command" modes.

Start with assigning your sign-in credentials to username and password properties. Where public key authentication is to be used, assign your private authentication key to key property (remember to set username in this case too). Subscribe to events to be notified of the session progress. on_auth_failed, on_auth_succeeded, and on_connect are among those particularly useful.

Special attention should be paid to setting up the server key trust. Class only allows connections to servers whose public keys are recognized as trusted, much like any other SSH clients do. Assign a path to the file containing the list of trusted keys to trusted_keys_file property. If you don't have such file, or if you would like to make trust decisions on the fly, subscribe to on_known_key_received and on_unknown_key_received events. These are fired whenever a trusted or untrusted key is received from the server. For unknown/untrusted keys, you need to set the Action parameter in your on_unknown_key_received event handler to catAcceptOnce (1) or catAcceptPermanently (2) for the connection to proceed.

Once you are all set up, you can go ahead by calling the connect method. This launches the SSH handshake and, if everything has been set up right, establishes a connection to the server. You can now use send and receive methods to exchange information with the server. You can exchange data in synchronous or asynchronous way; see the description in async_mode topic to learn more about each mode.

When you are done with the session, call disconnect to shut the connection down.

Hint: If you are only interested in a quick-and-dirty execution of a simple, non-interactive command, SSHClient offers a handy shortcut. connect_and_exec method is a self-contained mechanism which sets up a connection, performs the data exchange internally, and returns the command output. Please keep in mind that you still need to set up the server trust settings as described above for this method to work.