Remote SSH: Using JSCH with Expect4j

Now-a-days, we can see that whole world is moving around Clouds and virtualization. More and more applications are building for managing datacentre servers and other stuff. I have been part of one of such a module. I developed one module for monitoring and managing Linux servers remotely. We used JCraft’s Jsch with Google’s Expect4j for the same. Let’s get some idea about those API in brief.

JSCH

As the website suggests, it is pure implementation of SSH2. It is very easy to use and integrate into your program. It is a fact that it is not well documented. You can read more about JSchfrom its website.

Expect4j

Expect is the kitchen sink of IO control. It supports control of processes and sockets, and a complex method of match multiple patterns at the same time. This is what Google code has to say about Expect4j. When you executes commands on remote machines one after other, your program needs to know when to execute next command. It’s like send your command and wait for execution of the same. Or we can say that wait for the command prompt. Expect4j does similar stuff(as far as I know). It also provides closures for getting complete output log of executed commands. I don’t know if there is some other use of closures.

Now, let’s start with an example. First open up SSH connection on remote machine.

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JSch jsch = new JSch(); Session session = jsch.getSession(username, hostname, port); session.setPassword(password);   Hashtable<String,String> config = new Hashtable<String,String>(); config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no"); session.setConfig(config); session.connect(60000); ChannelShell channel = (ChannelShell) session.openChannel("shell"); Expect4j expect = new Expect4j(channel.getInputStream(), channel.getOutputStream()); channel.connect();

You can see that we have opened “shell” channel. That is because we want to execute sequence of commands on linux shell. You can see that Expect4j is initialized from JSCH session.

Now, we will prepare RegX patterns of command prompts of targeted machine. Be careful here because if these are not right then you might end up not executing commands. You can also provide closure provided by Expect4j to get output of your commands. (There might be some other use of it.)

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StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder(); Closure closure = new Closure() {             public void run(ExpectState expectState) throws Exception {                 buffer.append(expectState.getBuffer());//string buffer for appending output of executed command             } };

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String[] linuxPromptRegEx = new String[]{"\\>","#"}; List<Match> lstPattern =  new ArrayList<Match>();         for (String regexElement : linuxPromptRegEx) {             try {                 Match mat = new RegExpMatch(regexElement, closure);                 lstPattern.add(mat);             } catch (MalformedPatternException e) {                 e.printStackTrace();             } catch(Exception e) {                 e.printStackTrace();             } }

You can see that we have defined a closure that appends output of every command executed. We are providing this closure to every command pattern. I have my linux shell prompt working at “/>” and “#”. You can define your prompts as per your linux box.

Now, start executing commands.

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List<String> lstCmds = new ArrayList<String>(); lstCmds.add("ls"); lstCmds.add("pwd"); lstCmds.add("mkdir testdir");   for(String strCmd : lstCmds) {     int returnVal = expect.expect(objPattern);     if (returnVal == -2) {         expect.send(strCommandPattern);         expect.send("\r");//enter character     } }

We have three commands to execute in a single continuous SSH session.  First it expects one of its prompt patterns to match. If right prompt has encountered then send one command over the shell to execute.  Immediately after the command, send an enter character to execute the command. After that again wait for one of your command prompt to occur and then send other command. So, we can see that it send/wait kind of mechanism.

Now, put all together and here is a SSH client that can execute sequence of command on remote linux box. You will need following libraries in your project to execute this test class.

• expect4j-1.0.jar
• jakarta-oro.jar
• jsch-0.1.44.jar

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import org.apache.oro.text.regex.MalformedPatternException;   import com.jcraft.jsch.ChannelShell; import com.jcraft.jsch.JSch; import com.jcraft.jsch.Session;   import expect4j.Closure; import expect4j.Expect4j; import expect4j.ExpectState; import expect4j.matches.Match; import expect4j.matches.RegExpMatch;   public class SSHClient {       private static final int COMMAND_EXECUTION_SUCCESS_OPCODE = -2;     private static String ENTER_CHARACTER = "\r";     private static final int SSH_PORT = 22;     private List<String> lstCmds = new ArrayList<String>();     private static String[] linuxPromptRegEx = new String[]{"\\>","#", "~#"};       private Expect4j expect = null;     private StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();     private String userName;     private String password;     private String host;       /**      *      * @param host      * @param userName      * @param password      */     public SSHClient(String host, String userName, String password) {         this.host = host;         this.userName = userName;         this.password = password;     }     /**      *      * @param cmdsToExecute      */     public String execute(List<String> cmdsToExecute) {         this.lstCmds = cmdsToExecute;           Closure closure = new Closure() {             public void run(ExpectState expectState) throws Exception {                 buffer.append(expectState.getBuffer());             }         };         List<Match> lstPattern =  new ArrayList<Match>();         for (String regexElement : linuxPromptRegEx) {             try {                 Match mat = new RegExpMatch(regexElement, closure);                 lstPattern.add(mat);             } catch (MalformedPatternException e) {                 e.printStackTrace();             } catch(Exception e) {                 e.printStackTrace();             }         }           try {             expect = SSH();             boolean isSuccess = true;             for(String strCmd : lstCmds) {                 isSuccess = isSuccess(lstPattern,strCmd);                 if (!isSuccess) {                     isSuccess = isSuccess(lstPattern,strCmd);                 }             }               checkResult(expect.expect(lstPattern));         } catch (Exception ex) {             ex.printStackTrace();         } finally {             closeConnection();         }         return buffer.toString();     }     /**      *      * @param objPattern      * @param strCommandPattern      * @return      */     private boolean isSuccess(List<Match> objPattern,String strCommandPattern) {         try {             boolean isFailed = checkResult(expect.expect(objPattern));               if (!isFailed) {                 expect.send(strCommandPattern);                 expect.send(ENTER_CHARACTER);                 return true;             }             return false;         } catch (MalformedPatternException ex) {             ex.printStackTrace();             return false;         } catch (Exception ex) {             ex.printStackTrace();             return false;         }     }     /**      *      * @param hostname      * @param username      * @param password      * @param port      * @return      * @throws Exception      */     private Expect4j SSH() throws Exception {         JSch jsch = new JSch();         Session session = jsch.getSession(userName, host, SSH_PORT);         if (password != null) {             session.setPassword(password);         }         Hashtable<String,String> config = new Hashtable<String,String>();         config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");         session.setConfig(config);         session.connect(60000);         ChannelShell channel = (ChannelShell) session.openChannel("shell");         Expect4j expect = new Expect4j(channel.getInputStream(), channel.getOutputStream());         channel.connect();         return expect;     }     /**      *      * @param intRetVal      * @return      */     private boolean checkResult(int intRetVal) {         if (intRetVal == COMMAND_EXECUTION_SUCCESS_OPCODE) {             return true;         }         return false;     }     /**      *      */     private void closeConnection() {         if (expect!=null) {             expect.close();         }     }     /**      *      * @param args      */     public static void main(String[] args) {         SSHClient ssh = new SSHClient("linux_host", "root", "password");         List<String> cmdsToExecute = new ArrayList<String>();         cmdsToExecute.add("ls");         cmdsToExecute.add("pwd");         cmdsToExecute.add("mkdir testdir");         String outputLog = ssh.execute(cmdsToExecute);         System.out.println(outputLog);     } }

If you find any difficulties to execute it, just play around execute command loop and command prompts RegX patterns.