This document is an introduction to Digmia Secure Shell (DSSH for short). DSSH was written as a direct replacement for OpenSSH client for our use. DSSH adds SSH over SSH tunelling capabilities (for example to log in to network hidden by firewall), scripting support (using Groovy), advanced agent (which allows storing of passwords) and "su -" interactive logging for machines, which have disabled direct root login.

All of this was done to enable automated scripting and logging to lots of machines based on few simple rules.

It uses trilead SSH library (slightly patched).

Requirements

DSSH requires:

Supported platforms (out of the box):

Installation

First of all, you must have Java Runtime Environment (at least 6.0) already installed. If you have one of the supported platforms, you can download binary tarball, untar it and from the dssh-VERSION directory run:

./scripts/install.sh /usr/local/lib/dssh

(/usr/local/lib/dssh can be obviously changed to a different directory). The install script will create /etc/dssh/dssh.opts, which you can examine (you at least need to correct path to java binary).

It will also tell you to create symbolic links or add /usr/local/lib/dssh/scripts to your path.

You can test your installation by running

dssh username@server

and see if you get in.

Compilation

In case you want to recompile DSSH, you need to grab source distribution. Easiest way to recompile is to use NetBeans.

In jniconsole directory are some C++ binaries, which can be slightly modified to compile under different UNIX-like systems (it uses only POSIX calls, but includes will probably need to be corrected for each OS). Please contribute your changes back.

DSSH command suite

DSSH consists of several commands.

dssh

This is the basic command. You can see it’s full help by calling dssh -h. Basically, it should work similiary to OpenSSH client.

It uses a few environment variables:

dssh-agent

dssh-agent is a simple credidentals storage similiar to ssh-agent. It allows for storage of plaintext password in addition to private keys. This is useful if you want to authenticate as root to a server, which has disabled PermitRootLogin.

dssh and dssh-agent communicate through SSL-protected channel. You need to create a keypair, so dssh and dssh-agent would recognize (and trust) each other. Full SSL authentication/encryption is possible, but in most simple cases, you just pair dssh and dssh-agent using a keypair, that is shared between these programs. To do this, run dssh-create-keystore script included with distribution.

Then you can run dssh-agent like this:

dssh-agent 1234 &

where 1234 is a port, on which agent listens.

dssh-add

Similiary to ssh-add, dssh-add allows adding passwords and private keys to dssh-agent’s key store. We recommend setting DSSHAGENT variable like this:

export DSSHAGENT=1234

This will ease your life, as you don’t have to specify -a options to dssh or dssh-add every time. Adding private key is easy:

dssh-add -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa

Will add ~/.ssh/id_dsa key, asking for passphrase if necessary.

You can load a file in CSV format, which contains passwords and has the following structure:

server1.digmia.com;22;root;dorka;www-server1.digmia.com
server2.digmia.com;22;root;dorka;www-server2.digmia.com;www-server3.digmia.com

First column is server name, second column is port, third column is username, fourth column is password and any additional columns are optional and are aliases for the machine. If you have several entries for one machine, you need to specify aliases only once.

We recommend keeping this file on disk encrypted and loading it for example like this:

gpg --decrypt dssh-passwords.csv.gpg | dssh -l

Scripting

One of the strengths of dssh is BeanShell scripting support. Default script name is ~/.dssh/dssh.bsh.

Script should implement one class, that implements SSHConnectionCreator interface. It basically requires three methods:

public void setVerbose(boolean verbose);
public SSHConnection getAuthenticatedSSHConnection(String username, String host, int port, SSHConnection
             par, SSHAuthenticator auth);
public InteractiveSession getInteractiveSession(SSHConnection conn, String username, PasswordAuthenticator pass, String host) {

setVerbose is called by DSSH to inform your script if it should be verbose or not (passing true when dssh is called with -v). You can either ignore this call (having the method empty) or remember it for further use later.

getAuthenticatedSSHConnection is called when dssh wants to connect to a particular server. It should return authenticated SSH connection without creating session. This connection can either be used for creating port forwards, interactive sessions or copying files (not yet implemented). Cascading through tunnels is implemented here.

Finally, when user wants to enter interactive session, getInteractiveSession is called, which should return an InteractiveSession or it’s subclass (currently, InteractiveSuSession is implemented).

To best understand how scripts work, I am including a fairly advanced and well-commented example in documentation directory.

DSSH is (c) Juraj Bednar, Digmia s.r.o. and can be redistributed and used under conditions of GPLv2.

It uses Trilead-SSH, which has the following license:

The Trilead SSH for Java library is released under a BSD style license.
Copyright (c) 2007 Trilead AG (http://www.trilead.com)
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
a.) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
b.) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
c.) Neither the name of Trilead nor the names of its contributors may
    be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
    without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Trilead SSH-2 for Java includes code that was written by Dr. Christian Plattner
during his PhD at ETH Zurich. The license states the following:
Copyright (c) 2005 - 2006 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich),
  Department of Computer Science (http://www.inf.ethz.ch),
  Christian Plattner. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
a.) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
b.) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
c.) Neither the name of ETH Zurich nor the names of its contributors may
    be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
    without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
The Java implementations of the AES, Blowfish and 3DES ciphers have been
taken (and slightly modified) from the cryptography package released by
"The Legion Of The Bouncy Castle".
Their license states the following:
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2004 The Legion Of The Bouncy Castle
(http://www.bouncycastle.org)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

SSH is a registered trademark of SSH Communications Security Corp in the United States and in certain other jurisdictions. Java and J2ME are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other names and marks are property of their respective owners.

It also uses OpenCSV, which is under Apache 2 license (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).

GNU GetOpt is under LGPL license (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/library.html)