Python script - SCP on windows - python

How is it possible to do secure copy using python (windows native install - ActivePython). Unfortunately pexpect module is for unix only and we don't want cygwin locally. I wrote a script that based on pscp.exe win tool - but always stops at first execution becuse of fingerprint host id. and haven't found option to switch this off.
the remote hosts are running ssh-server on cygwin (win 2003 servers).
Thanks

paramiko is pretty slick. See this question for some more details.

I strongly recommend that you use keys rather than passwords. If you use ssh keys properly, you do not need to use expect, as the scp command won't ask for any user input. If you have command line ssh installed, you can make a key like this:
ssh-keygen -t dsa
Then simply follow the instructions provided, and save the key to the default location. If you put a passphrase on it, you'll need to use some sort of ssh agent, either the command line ssh-agent or pagent on windows. You can also create an ssh key with the putty suite's puttygen.
To set up the key for authentication, simply put a copy of id_dsa.pub on the host you want to scp to in the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ssh4py
SCP example: http://blog.keyphrene.com/keyphrene/index.php/2008/09/18/13-scp

Twisted Conch supports ssh and sftp.

How do you expect to provide the authentication data? The easiest way is to create a key, and make sure it is in the server's list of accepted hosts. That way scp will authenticate using the private/public key pair automatically, and "just work".
This is a handy tutorial on how to go about creating and uploading the key. Of course this assumes you have the necessary admin access to the server.

Related

How to use fabric with ssh keys?

Using fabric 2.4 and trying to set up ssh keys to remotely connect to various linux servers?
Python is new to me, I've followed example on this site and Read python doc but still unclear to me.
Currently running python on windows and my script is able to connect to remote linux servers because i have connection string defined as follows:
ssh_connect = Connection(host='servername', user='user1', connect_kwargs={'password': 'blahblah'})
I am running python script from my window server and instead of defining the connection string, I would like it to use ssh key. I have the id_rsa.pub file from the linux server. I would like to setup up on my windows box and have the script use that for connections?
You can always just pass a key via Fabric through it's command line arguments. This is definitely kind of a vague question, especially since it's running fabric on Windows, which to my knowledge is not technically supported by them, though it does work.
fab -i /Path/to/key
Source: fab --help and the official documentation here

Options to run a commnd remotely over ssh

I have numerous test servers. These test servers get re-imaged frequently, and they have the same user account and password after being re-imaged. I want to write a python script that runs a command remotely over ssh on one of these servers, without prompting user for a password, and gathers the output of the command. In some circumstance I want to run one command, get output, analyze the output. In other situation, I want to run several commands at a time (possibly run a script file). I read many postings about running commands remotely, using third party packages (e.g. paramiko). Is there a recommended way to achieve this task without using additional packages ? The server from which my script will be run might not have the package installed.
Or should I used pexpect ?
Ideally I would like to use subprocess and capture the output (providing password as an argument). Of course, my script has to handle the case when the client is logging for first time, and prompted to add ssh key to .ssh/knownhosts file.
Thank you,
Ahmed.
If host key security is not an issue (you are on a trusted network etc), you can bypass the host checking. And if you use key-based authentication there is no need for a password prompt:
ssh -oUserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -oStrictHostKeyChecking=no -oPasswordAuthentication=no \
-n doctor#tardis some_cmd
This way you can just use subprocess as if you executed some_cmd locally.

How to run git fetch over ssh in a windows subprocess

I've got some code which needs to grab code from github periodically (on a Windows machine).
When I do pulls manually, I use GitBash, and I've got ssh keys running for the repos I check so everything is fine. However when I try to run the same actions in a python subprocess I don't have the ssh services which GitBash provides and I'm unable to authenticate to the repo.
How should I proceed from here. I can think of a couple of different options:
I could revert to using https:// fetches. This is problematic because the repos I'm fetching use 2-factor authentication and are going to be running unattended. Is there a way to access an https repo that has 2fa from a command line?
I've tried calling sh.exe with arguments that will fire off ssh-agent and then issuing my commands so that everything is running more or less the way it does in gitBash, but that doesn't seem to work:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\sh.exe" -c "C:/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Git/bin/ssh-agent.exe; C:/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Git/bin/ssh.exe -t git#github.com"
produces
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-SiVYsy3660/agent.3660; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=8292; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 8292;
Could not create directory '/.ssh'.
The authenticity of host 'github.com (192.30.252.129)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is XXXXXXXXXXX
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts (/.ssh/known_hosts).
Permission denied (publickey).
Could I use an ssh module in python like paramiko to establish a connection? It looks to me like that's only for ssh'ing into a remote terminal. Is there a way to make it provide an ssh connection that git.exe can use?
So, I'd be grateful if anybody has done this before or has a better alternative
The git bash set the HOME environment variable, which allows git to find the ssh keys (in %HOME%/.ssh)
You need to make sure the python process has or define HOME to the same PATH.
As explained in "Python os.environ[“HOME”] works on idle but not in a script", you need to set HOME to %USERPROFILE% (or, in python, to os.path.expanduser("~") ).

Python - Read in binary file over SSH

With Python, I need to read a file into a script similar to open(file,"rb"). However, the file is on a server that I can access through SSH. Any suggestions on how I can easily do this? I am trying to avoid paramiko and am using pexpect to log into the SSH server, so a method using pexpect would be ideal.
Thanks,
Eric
You can mount the remote file system to local by using sshfs, then you can use is like normal file. The fuse module is needed by the sshfs.
If it's a short file you can get output of ssh command using subprocess.Popen
ssh root#ip_address_of_the_server 'cat /path/to/your/file'
Note: Password less setup using keys should be configured in order for it to work.

How can you automate terminal commands?

I'm tired of doing this.
ssh me#somehost.com
input my password
sudo su - someuser
input my password
cd /some/working/directory
<run some commands>
Is there anyway to automate this? Do I need a special shell? or a shell emulator? can I programmatically drive the shell up to certain point then run manual commands on it?
Bonus points of it's programmed in python for extra hacking goodness
edit: All the answers below focus on the "full automation" part of the question: Where the hard part is what I highlighted above. Here is another example to see if I can capture the essence.
ssh me#somehost.com
<get a shell because keys are setup>
sudo su - user_that_deploys_the_app
<input password, because we don't want to give passwordless sudo to developers>
cd env; source bin/activate
cd /path/where/ur/app/is/staging
<edit some files, restart the server, edit some more, check the logs, etc.>
exit the term
For the ssh/authentication piece, you can setup passwordless authentication by using keys. Then you can simply use ssh and a bash script to execute a series of commands in an automated fashion.
You could use Python here, but if you are executing a series of shell commands, it's probably a better idea to use a shell script, as that's precisely what they do.
Alternately, look into Fabric for your automation needs. It's Python-based, and your "recipes" are written in Python.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but what you're probably asking about is getting SSH working in password-less mode using public keys. The general idea is you generate an SSH keypair:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
which gives you id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. You append the contents of id_rsa.pub to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file of your target user, and SSH from that point on will not ask for credentials. In your example, this will work out to:
Only once
# On your source machine
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
# Copy this to clip board
# On somehost.com
su - someuser
# edit ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and paste what you had copied from previous step
From now on, you can now just run
ssh someuser#somehost.com "sh -c 'cd /some/dir; command.sh'"
and not be prompted for credentials.
fabric is a fine choice, as others have pointed out. there is also pexpect which might be more what you're looking for.
You can play with autoexpect. It creates expect script (script language intended to handle interaction with user). Run
autoexpect ssh me#somehost.com
followed by rest of commands. Script script.exp will be created.
Please note, that exact results of input and output will be recorded by the script. If output may differ from execution to execution, you'll need to modify a bit generated script.
As Daniel pointed out you need to have a secure way of doing ssh and sudo on the boxes. Those items are universal to dealing with linux/unix boxes. Once you've tackled that you can use fabric. It's a python based tool to do automation.
You can set stuff up in your ~/.ssh/config
For example:
Host somehost
User test
See ssh_config(5) for more info.
Next, you can generate a SSH key using ssh-keygen(1), run ssh-agent(1), and use that for authentication.
If you want to run a command on a remote machine, you can just use something like:
$ ssh somehost "sh myscript.sh ${myparameter}".
I hope this at least points you in the right direction :)
If you need sudo access, then there are obvious potential security issues though ... You can use ChrootDirectory on a per user basis inside a Match block though. See sshd_config(5) for info.
try module paramiko. This can meet your requirement.

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