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authorRobey Pointer <robey@twitter.com>2009-05-10 21:11:33 -0700
committerRobey Pointer <robey@twitter.com>2009-05-10 21:11:33 -0700
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+
+========
+paramiko
+========
+
+:Paramiko: Python SSH module
+:Copyright: Copyright (c) 2003-2009 Robey Pointer <robey@lag.net>
+:License: LGPL
+:Homepage: http://www.lag.net/paramiko/
+
+
+paramiko 1.7.4
+==============
+
+"Desmond" release, 06 july 2008
+
+
+What
+----
+
+"paramiko" is a combination of the esperanto words for "paranoid" and
+"friend". it's a module for python 2.2+ that implements the SSH2 protocol
+for secure (encrypted and authenticated) connections to remote machines.
+unlike SSL (aka TLS), SSH2 protocol does not require heirarchical
+certificates signed by a powerful central authority. you may know SSH2 as
+the protocol that replaced telnet and rsh for secure access to remote
+shells, but the protocol also includes the ability to open arbitrary
+channels to remote services across the encrypted tunnel (this is how sftp
+works, for example).
+
+it is written entirely in python (no C or platform-dependent code) and is
+released under the GNU LGPL (lesser GPL).
+
+the package and its API is fairly well documented in the "doc/" folder
+that should have come with this archive.
+
+
+Requirements
+------------
+
+ - python 2.3 <http://www.python.org/>
+ (python 2.2 is also supported, but not recommended)
+ - pycrypto 1.9+ <http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html>
+ (2.0 works too)
+
+pycrypto compiled for Win32 can be downloaded from the HashTar homepage:
+ http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/hashtar
+
+you can also build it yourself using the free MinGW tools and this command
+line (thanks to Roger Binns for the info)::
+
+ python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 bdist_wininst
+
+If you have setuptools, you can build and install paramiko and all its
+dependencies with this command (as root)::
+
+ easy_install ./
+
+
+Portability
+-----------
+
+i code and test this library on Linux and MacOS X. for that reason, i'm
+pretty sure that it works for all posix platforms, including MacOS. it
+should also work on Windows, though i don't test it as frequently there.
+if you run into Windows problems, send me a patch: portability is important
+to me.
+
+python 2.2 may work, thanks to some patches from Roger Binns. things to
+watch out for:
+
+ * sockets in 2.2 don't support timeouts, so the 'select' module is
+ imported to do polling.
+ * logging is mostly stubbed out. it works just enough to let paramiko
+ create log files for debugging, if you want them. to get real logging,
+ you can backport python 2.3's logging package. Roger has done that
+ already:
+ http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=75211&package_id=113804
+
+you really should upgrade to python 2.3. laziness is no excuse! :)
+
+some python distributions don't include the utf-8 string encodings, for
+reasons of space (misdirected as that is). if your distribution is
+missing encodings, you'll see an error like this::
+
+ LookupError: no codec search functions registered: can't find encoding
+
+this means you need to copy string encodings over from a working system.
+(it probably only happens on embedded systems, not normal python
+installs.) Valeriy Pogrebitskiy says the best place to look is
+``.../lib/python*/encodings/__init__.py``.
+
+
+Bugs & Support
+--------------
+
+there's a launchpage page for paramiko, with a bug tracker:
+
+ https://launchpad.net/paramiko/
+
+this is the primary place to file and browse bug reports.
+
+there's also a low-traffic mailing list for support and discussions:
+
+ http://www.lag.net/mailman/listinfo/paramiko
+
+
+Demo
+----
+
+several demo scripts come with paramiko to demonstrate how to use it.
+probably the simplest demo of all is this::
+
+ import paramiko, base64
+ key = paramiko.RSAKey(data=base64.decodestring('AAA...'))
+ client = paramiko.SSHClient()
+ client.get_host_keys().add('ssh.example.com', 'ssh-rsa', key)
+ client.connect('ssh.example.com', username='strongbad', password='thecheat')
+ stdin, stdout, stderr = client.exec_command('ls')
+ for line in stdout:
+ print '... ' + line.strip('\n')
+ client.close()
+
+...which prints out the results of executing ``ls`` on a remote server.
+(the host key 'AAA...' should of course be replaced by the actual base64
+encoding of the host key. if you skip host key verification, the
+connection is not secure!)
+
+the following example scripts (in demos/) get progressively more detailed:
+
+:demo_simple.py:
+ calls invoke_shell() and emulates a terminal/tty through which you can
+ execute commands interactively on a remote server. think of it as a
+ poor man's ssh command-line client.
+
+:demo.py:
+ same as demo_simple.py, but allows you to authenticiate using a
+ private key, attempts to use an SSH-agent if present, and uses the long
+ form of some of the API calls.
+
+:forward.py:
+ command-line script to set up port-forwarding across an ssh transport.
+ (requires python 2.3.)
+
+:demo_sftp.py:
+ opens an sftp session and does a few simple file operations.
+
+:demo_server.py:
+ an ssh server that listens on port 2200 and accepts a login for
+ 'robey' (password 'foo'), and pretends to be a BBS. meant to be a
+ very simple demo of writing an ssh server.
+
+
+Use
+---
+
+the demo scripts are probably the best example of how to use this package.
+there is also a lot of documentation, generated with epydoc, in the doc/
+folder. point your browser there. seriously, do it. mad props to
+epydoc, which actually motivated me to write more documentation than i
+ever would have before.
+
+there are also unit tests here::
+
+ $ python ./test.py
+
+which will verify that most of the core components are working correctly.