How to SSH into a server from a node.js application?

Question

var exec = require('child_process').exec;

exec('ssh my_ip',function(err,stdout,stderr){
    console.log(err,stdout,stderr);
});

This just freezes - I guess, because ssh my_ip asks for password, is interactive, etc. How to do it correctly?

Answer 1

There's a node.js module written to perform tasks in SSH using node called ssh2 by mscdex. It can be found here. An example for what you're wanting (from the readme) would be:

var Connection = require('ssh2');

var c = new Connection();
c.on('connect', function() {
  console.log('Connection :: connect');
});
c.on('ready', function() {
  console.log('Connection :: ready');
  c.exec('uptime', function(err, stream) {
    if (err) throw err;
    stream.on('data', function(data, extended) {
      console.log((extended === 'stderr' ? 'STDERR: ' : 'STDOUT: ')
                  + data);
    });
    stream.on('end', function() {
      console.log('Stream :: EOF');
    });
    stream.on('close', function() {
      console.log('Stream :: close');
    });
    stream.on('exit', function(code, signal) {
      console.log('Stream :: exit :: code: ' + code + ', signal: ' + signal);
      c.end();
    });
  });
});
c.on('error', function(err) {
  console.log('Connection :: error :: ' + err);
});
c.on('end', function() {
  console.log('Connection :: end');
});
c.on('close', function(had_error) {
  console.log('Connection :: close');
});
c.connect({
  host: '192.168.100.100',
  port: 22,
  username: 'frylock',
  privateKey: require('fs').readFileSync('/here/is/my/key')
});

Answer 2

The other library on this page has a lower level API.

So I've wrote a lightweight wrapper for it. node-ssh which is also available on GitHub under the MIT license.

Here's an example on how to use it.

var driver, ssh;

driver = require('node-ssh');

ssh = new driver();

ssh.connect({
  host: 'localhost',
  username: 'steel',
  privateKey: '/home/steel/.ssh/id_rsa'
})
.then(function() {
  // Source, Target
  ssh.putFile('/home/steel/.ssh/id_rsa', '/home/steel/.ssh/id_rsa_bkp').then(function() {
    console.log("File Uploaded to the Remote Server");
  }, function(error) {
    console.log("Error here");
    console.log(error);
  });
  // Command
  ssh.exec('hh_client', ['--check'], { cwd: '/var/www/html' }).then(function(result) {
    console.log('STDOUT: ' + result.stdout);
    console.log('STDERR: ' + result.stderr);
  });
});