ssh-agent with passwords without spawning too many processes - linux

I use ssh-agent with password-protected keys on Linux. Every time I log into a certain machine, I do this:
eval `ssh-agent` && ssh-add
This works well enough, but every time I log in and do this, I create another ssh-agent. Once in a while, I will do a killall ssh-agent to reap them. Is there a simple way to reuse the same ssh-agent process across different sessions?

have a look at Keychain. It was written b people in a similar situation to yourself.
Keychain

How much control do you have over this machine? One answer would be to run ssh-agent as a daemon process. Other options are explained on this web page, basically testing to see if the agent is around and then running it if it's not.
To reproduce one of the ideas here:
SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
function start_agent {
echo "Initialising new SSH agent..."
/usr/bin/ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
echo succeeded
chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
/usr/bin/ssh-add;
}
# Source SSH settings, if applicable
if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
. "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
#ps ${SSH_AGENT_PID} doesn’t work under cywgin
ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
start_agent;
}
else
start_agent;
fi

You can do:
ssh-agent $SHELL
This will cause ssh-agent to exit when the shell exits. They still won't be shared across sessions, but at least they will go away when you do.

Depending on which shell you use, you can set different profiles for login shells and mere regular new shells. In general you want to start ssh-agent for login shells, but not for every subshell. In bash these files would be .bashrc and .bash_login, for example.
Most desktop linuxes these days run ssh-agent for you. You just add your key with ssh-add, and then forward the keys over to remote ssh sessions by running
ssh -A

Related

Git- How to kill ssh-agent properly on Linux

I am using git on linux, when pushing to gitlab, sometimes it either stuck at:
debug1: Connecting to gitlab.com [52.167.219.168] port 22.
or
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype keepalive#openssh.com reply 1
debug3: send packet: type 100
Seems restarting linux could solve it, but no body like to reboot machines.
So, I am trying to kill ssh-agent process, then restart it.
But the process is always defunct after kill, and then I can't use git via ssh at all, so is there any way to restart the ssh-agent, or solve the issue described above without restarting the machine?
#Update
The ssh keys that I use include key phrase, which I would input on first use of a ssh key.
The issue usually occurs after I bring the Linux desktop back from sleep, thus the network is reconnected, not sure whether this matters?
Again, does any one knows how to kill or restart a ssh-agent agent, without making it become defunct?
You can kill ssh-agent by running:
eval "$(ssh-agent -k)"
You can try this bash script to terminate the SSH agent:
#!/bin/bash
## in .bash_profile
SSHAGENT=`which ssh-agent`
SSHAGENTARGS="-s"
if [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" -a -x "$SSHAGENT" ]; then
eval `$SSHAGENT $SSHAGENTARGS`
trap "kill $SSH_AGENT_PID" 0
fi
## in .logout
if [ ${SSH_AGENT_PID+1} == 1 ]; then
ssh-add -D
ssh-agent -k > /dev/null 2>&1
unset SSH_AGENT_PID
unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK
fi
Many ways:
killall ssh-agent
SSH_AGENT_PID="$(pidof ssh-agent)" ssh-agent -k
kill -9 $(pidof ssh-agent)
pidof is from the procps project. You may be able to find it for your distro if it is packaged
yes, ssh-agent might be defunct: [ssh-agent] <defunct>
trying to kill the agent could help:
eval "$(ssh-agent -k)"
but also try to check your keyring process (e.g. gnome-keyring-daemon), restart it or even remove the ssh socket file:
rm /run/user/$UID/keyring/ssh
It shows defunct probably because its parent process is still monitoring it, so it's not removed from the process table. It's not a big deal, the process is killed. Just start a new ssh-agent:
eval $(ssh-agent)
ssh-add

ssh connections are spawning hundreds of ssh-agent /bin/bash instances

I have an Arch server running on a VMWare VM. I connect to it through a Firewall that forwards ssh connections from port X to port 22 on the server. Yesterday, I started receiving the error "Bash: Fork: Resource Temporarily Unavailable". I can log in as root and manage things without problem, but it seems that when I ssh in as the user I normally use, the ssh session is now spawning hundreds of ssh-agent /bin/bash sessions. This is, in turn, using up all the threads and file descriptors (from what I can tell) on the system and making it unusable. The little bit of info I've been able to find thus far tells me that I must have some sort of loop, but this hasn't happened until yesterday, possibly when I ran updates. At this point, I am open to suggestions.
One of your shell initialization files is probably spawning a shell, which, when reading the shell initialization files will spawn a shell, etc.
You mentioned ssh-agent /bin/bash. Putting this in .bashrc will definitely cause problems, as this instructs ssh-agent to spawn bash...
Instead, use something like
if [[ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]]; then
eval $(ssh-agent)
fi
in .bashrc (or .xinitrc or .xsession for systems with graphical logins).
Or possibly (untested):
if [[ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]]; then
ssh-agent /bin/bash
fi
in .bash_profile.
in my case (windows) it was because i was not exiting when done with a shell, so they were not getting disposed.
when done use ctrl+d or type exit to terminate the ssh agent

LDAP - SSH script across multiple VM's

So I'm ssh'ing into a router that has several VM's. It is setup using LDAP so that each VM has the same files, settings, etc. However they have different cores allocated, different libraries and packages installed. Instead of logging into each VM individually and running the command, I want to automate it by putting the script in .bashrc.
So what I have so far:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lhome/username
# .so files are in ~/ to avoid permission denied problems
output=$(cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "^cpu cores" | uniq | tail -c 2)
current=server_name
if [[ `hostname-s` != $current ]]; then
ssh $current
fi
/path/to/program --hostname $(echo $(hostname -s)) --threads $((output*2))
Each VM, upon logging in, will execute this script, so I have to check if the current VM has the hostname to avoid an SSH loop. The idea is to run the program, then exit back out to the origin to resume the script. The problem is of course that the process will die upon logging out.
It's been suggested to me to use TMUX on an array of the hostnames, but I would have no idea on how to approach this.
You could install clusterSSH, set up a list of hostnames, and execute things from the terminal windows opened. You may use screen/tmux/nohup to allow processes started to keep running, even after logout.
Yet, if you still want to play around with scripting, you may install tmux, and use:
while read host; do
scp "script_to_run_remotely" ${host}:~/
ssh ${host} tmux new-session -d '~/script_to_run_remotely'\; detach
done < hostlist
Note: hostlist should be a list of hostnames, one per line.

write a shell script to ssh to a remote machine and execute commands

I have two questions:
There are multiple remote linux machines, and I need to write a shell script which will execute the same set of commands in each machine. (Including some sudo operations). How can this be done using shell scripting?
When ssh'ing to the remote machine, how to handle when it prompts for RSA fingerprint authentication.
The remote machines are VMs created on the run and I just have their IPs. So, I cant place a script file beforehand in those machines and execute them from my machine.
There are multiple remote linux machines, and I need to write a shell script which will execute the same set of commands in each machine. (Including some sudo operations). How can this be done using shell scripting?
You can do this with ssh, for example:
#!/bin/bash
USERNAME=someUser
HOSTS="host1 host2 host3"
SCRIPT="pwd; ls"
for HOSTNAME in ${HOSTS} ; do
ssh -l ${USERNAME} ${HOSTNAME} "${SCRIPT}"
done
When ssh'ing to the remote machine, how to handle when it prompts for RSA fingerprint authentication.
You can add the StrictHostKeyChecking=no option to ssh:
ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l username hostname "pwd; ls"
This will disable the host key check and automatically add the host key to the list of known hosts. If you do not want to have the host added to the known hosts file, add the option -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null.
Note that this disables certain security checks, for example protection against man-in-the-middle attack. It should therefore not be applied in a security sensitive environment.
Install sshpass using, apt-get install sshpass then edit the script and put your linux machines IPs, usernames and password in respective order. After that run that script. Thats it ! This script will install VLC in all systems.
#!/bin/bash
SCRIPT="cd Desktop; pwd; echo -e 'PASSWORD' | sudo -S apt-get install vlc"
HOSTS=("192.168.1.121" "192.168.1.122" "192.168.1.123")
USERNAMES=("username1" "username2" "username3")
PASSWORDS=("password1" "password2" "password3")
for i in ${!HOSTS[*]} ; do
echo ${HOSTS[i]}
SCR=${SCRIPT/PASSWORD/${PASSWORDS[i]}}
sshpass -p ${PASSWORDS[i]} ssh -l ${USERNAMES[i]} ${HOSTS[i]} "${SCR}"
done
This work for me.
Syntax : ssh -i pemfile.pem user_name#ip_address 'command_1 ; command 2; command 3'
#! /bin/bash
echo "########### connecting to server and run commands in sequence ###########"
ssh -i ~/.ssh/ec2_instance.pem ubuntu#ip_address 'touch a.txt; touch b.txt; sudo systemctl status tomcat.service'
There are a number of ways to handle this.
My favorite way is to install http://pamsshagentauth.sourceforge.net/ on the remote systems and also your own public key. (Figure out a way to get these installed on the VM, somehow you got an entire Unix system installed, what's a couple more files?)
With your ssh agent forwarded, you can now log in to every system without a password.
And even better, that pam module will authenticate for sudo with your ssh key pair so you can run with root (or any other user's) rights as needed.
You don't need to worry about the host key interaction. If the input is not a terminal then ssh will just limit your ability to forward agents and authenticate with passwords.
You should also look into packages like Capistrano. Definitely look around that site; it has an introduction to remote scripting.
Individual script lines might look something like this:
ssh remote-system-name command arguments ... # so, for exmaple,
ssh target.mycorp.net sudo puppet apply
The accepted answer sshes to machines sequentially. In case you want to ssh to multiple machines and run some long-running commands like scp concurrently on them, run the ssh command as a background process.
#!/bin/bash
username="user"
servers=("srv-001" "srv-002" "srv-002" "srv-003");
script="pwd;"
for s in "${servers[#]}"; do
echo "sshing ${username}#${s} to run ${script}"
(ssh ${username}#${s} ${script})& # Run in background
done
wait # If removed, you can run some other script here
If you are able to write Perl code, then you should consider using Net::OpenSSH::Parallel.
You would be able to describe the actions that have to be run in every host in a declarative manner and the module will take care of all the scary details. Running commands through sudo is also supported.
For this kind of tasks, I repeatedly use Ansible which allows to duplicate coherently bash scripts in several containets or VM. Ansible (more precisely Red Hat) now has an additional web interface AWX which is the open-source edition of their commercial Tower.
Ansible: https://www.ansible.com/
AWX:https://github.com/ansible/awx
Ansible Tower: commercial product, you will probably fist explore the free open-source AWX, rather than the 15days free-trail of Tower
There is are multiple ways to execute the commands or script in the multiple remote Linux machines.
One simple & easiest way is via pssh (parallel ssh program)
pssh: is a program for executing ssh in parallel on a number of hosts. It provides features such as sending input to all of the processes, passing a password to ssh, saving the output to files, and timing out.
Example & Usage:
Connect to host1 and host2, and print "hello, world" from each:
pssh -i -H "host1 host2" echo "hello, world"
Run commands via a script on multiple servers:
pssh -h hosts.txt -P -I<./commands.sh
Usage & run a command without checking or saving host keys:
pssh -h hostname_ip.txt -x '-q -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey -o PubkeyAuthentication=yes' -i 'uptime; hostname -f'
If the file hosts.txt has a large number of entries, say 100, then the parallelism option may also be set to 100 to ensure that the commands are run concurrently:
pssh -i -h hosts.txt -p 100 -t 0 sleep 10000
Options:
-I: Read input and sends to each ssh process.
-P: Tells pssh to display output as it arrives.
-h: Reads the host's file.
-H : [user#]host[:port] for single-host.
-i: Display standard output and standard error as each host completes
-x args: Passes extra SSH command-line arguments
-o option: Can be used to give options in the format used in the configuration file.(/etc/ssh/ssh_config) (~/.ssh/config)
-p parallelism: Use the given number as the maximum number of concurrent connections
-q Quiet mode: Causes most warning and diagnostic messages to be suppressed.
-t: Make connections time out after the given number of seconds. 0 means pssh will not timeout any connections
When ssh'ing to the remote machine, how to handle when it prompts for
RSA fingerprint authentication.
Disable the StrictHostKeyChecking to handle the RSA authentication prompt.
-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
Source: man pssh
This worked for me. I made a function. Put this in your shell script:
sshcmd(){
ssh $1#$2 $3
}
sshcmd USER HOST COMMAND
If you have multiple machines that you want to do the same command on you would repeat that line with a semi colon. For example, if you have two machines you would do this:
sshcmd USER HOST COMMAND ; sshcmd USER HOST COMMAND
Replace USER with the user of the computer. Replace HOST with the name of the computer. Replace COMMAND with the command you want to do on the computer.
Hope this helps!
You can follow this approach :
Connect to remote machine using Expect Script. If your machine doesn't support expect you can download the same. Writing Expect script is very easy (google to get help on this)
Put all the action which needs to be performed on remote server in a shell script.
Invoke remote shell script from expect script once login is successful.

SSH: guarding stdout against disconnect

My server deployment script triggers a long-running process through SSH, like so:
ssh host 'install.sh'
Since my internet connection at home is not the best, I can sometimes be disconnected while the install.sh is running. (This is easily simulated by closing the terminal window.) I would really like for the install.sh script to keep running in those cases, so that I don't end up with interrupted apt-get processes and similar nuisances.
The reason why install.sh gets killed seems to be that stdout and stderr are closed when the SSH session is yanked, so writing to them fails. (It's not an issue of SIGHUP, by the way -- using nohup makes no difference.) If I put touch ~/1 && echo this fails && touch ~/2 into install.sh, only ~/1 is created.
So running ssh host 'install.sh &> install.out' solves the problem, but then I lose any "live" progress and error output.
So my question is: What's an easy/idiomatic way to run a process through SSH so that it doesn't crash if SSH dies, but so that I can still see the output as it runs?
Solutions I have tried:
When I run things manually, I use screen for cases like this, but I don't think it will be of much help here because I need to run install.sh automatically from a shell script. Screen seems to be made for interactive use (it complains "Must be connected to a terminal.").
Using install.sh 2>&1 | tee install.out didn't help either (silly of me to think it might).
You can redirect stdout/stderr into install.out and then tail -f it. The following snippet actually works:
touch install.out && # so tail does not bark (race condition)
(install.sh < /dev/null &> install.out &
tail --pid "$!" -F install.out)
But surely there must a less awkward way to do the same thing?
Try using screen:
screen ./install.sh
If your ssh session gets interrupted, you can simply reattach to the session via another ssh connection:
screen -x
You can provide a terminal to your ssh session using the -t switch:
ssh -t server screen ./install.sh
install.sh 2>&1 | tee install.out
if the only issue is not getting stderr. You didn't say exactly why the tee wasn't acceptable. You may need the other nohup/stdin tweaks.

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