SSH is an every-day tool of any Linux System Administration job. It is an easy and secure way to access remote machines on the network, transfer data and execute remote commands. Apart from interactive mode, there are many tools exist that enable automation of remote tasks that also rely on the existing ssh
server/client architecture. For one such tool, you can read about ansible on Ubuntu for example. You can also find many implementations of the ssh client, but what about accessing the abilities ssh provides from code?
JSch is a project that implements the ssh protocol in Java. With it’s help, you can build applications that are capable to connect to and interact with a remote or local SSH Server. This way your application is capable of managing any aspect of the target machine that you could complete with your native ssh client, which gives yet another powerful addition to the already vast Java toolset.
In this article we will import JSch into our Java project, and develop the minimal necessary code pieces to create an application that can log in to a remote machine’s ssh server, execute some commands in the remote interactive shell, closes the session, then presents the output. This application will be minimal, however, it may give a hint of the power it provides.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to import JSch into your Java project
- How to setup the test environment
- How to implement the UserInfo interface in a custom class
- How to write an application that initiates interactive ssh session
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