Home/ Questions/Q 7693853
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-31T21:11:06+00:00

Firstly I tried to get fabric working, but it kept asking me for a

  • 0

Firstly I tried to get fabric working, but it kept asking me for a password.

So I’m trying to reduce the problem. Perhaps it would be a good POC to just create a SSH connection from Python. I discovered that fabric uses parmiko for it’s SSH handling. Hmm. Ok, lets try to get an example working.

Here’s what I wrote.

from ssh import *
import os 

print "SSH-AGENT VARS"

print "SSH_AGENT_PID: %s " % os.environ['SSH_AGENT_PID']
print "SSH_AUTH_SOCK: %s " % os.environ['SSH_AUTH_SOCK']

a = Agent()
keys=a.get_keys()
print keys.count("192.168.1.10")


client = SSHClient()
client.load_system_host_keys()
client.connect('192.168.1.10')

Resulting in the following error messages:

% ./ssh_test.py
SSH-AGENT VARS
SSH_AGENT_PID: 26557 
SSH_AUTH_SOCK: /tmp/ssh-pZHBElj26556/agent.26556 
0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./ssh_test.py", line 18, in <module>
    client.connect('192.168.1.10')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ssh/client.py", line 332, in connect
    self._auth(username, password, pkey, key_filenames, allow_agent, look_for_keys)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ssh/client.py", line 493, in _auth
    raise saved_exception
ssh.PasswordRequiredException: Private key file is encrypted

ssh-agent is running in my session, I can SSH to that box, no problems, it doesn’t prompt me for a password or anything.

I’m guessing paramiko isn’t able to connect to the running ssh-agent for some weird reason.

Has anyone else had a problem like this? I’m using Ubuntu 11.10

I seem to remember trying Fabric a while back and having similar problems, perhaps it’s been broken for a while?

I connect, just using the host name as the argument. This is as per the documentation.

http://www.lag.net/paramiko/docs/paramiko.SSHClient-class.html

connect(self, hostname, port=22, username=None, password=None, pkey=None, key_filename=None, timeout=None, allow_agent=True, look_for_keys=True, compress=False)
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ok, so the first thing I discovered was that Paramiko is way out of date, and unmaintained.

    It’s now known as package ssh, at least under Ubuntu, and has a different maintainer (bitprophet)

    Here’s a sample session, using it:

    $ ./ssh_demo.py
Hostname: 192.168.1.10
*** Host key OK.
Username [bryan]: root
Trying ssh-agent key eee5638f390e1698898984b10adfa9317 ... success!
*** Here we go!

Linux top.secret.com 2.9.37-1-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Nov 3 03:41:26 UTC 2011 x86_64
┌┌(root@top)-(10:44am-:-03/27)┌-¨-¨¨˙

    That doesn’t answer the question of why fabric isn’t authenticating against the ssh-agent correctly thought. So the question remains open.

    Update:

    Thanks to Morgan’s hint, I’ve gotten a little further with this problem. As he suggested, I enabled ssh logging by adding the following to the top of my fabfile.py

    from fabric.api import *
import ssh
ssh.util.log_to_file("paramiko.log", 10)

    I also monitored the server log. In doing so I discovered that the user which I specified was being disregarded and my local username used instead.

    On the server:

    tail -f /var/log/auth.log 
Mar 28 11:12:36 xxxxxxxxxxx sshd[17652]: Invalid user bryan from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

    Locally:

    tail -f paramiko.log    
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.038] thr=1   ssh.transport: starting thread (client mode): 0x8dfc66cL
INF [20120328-11:39:29.066] thr=1   ssh.transport: Connected (version 2.0, client OpenSSH_5.5p1)
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.093] thr=1   ssh.transport: kex algos:['diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256', 'diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1', 'diffie-hellman-group14-sha1', 'diffie-hellman-group1-sha1'] server key:['ssh-rsa', 'ssh-dss'] client encrypt:['aes128-ctr', 'aes192-ctr', 'aes256-ctr', 'arcfour256', 'arcfour128', 'aes128-cbc', '3des-cbc', 'blowfish-cbc', 'cast128-cbc', 'aes192-cbc', 'aes256-cbc', 'arcfour', 'rijndael-cbc@lysator.liu.se'] server encrypt:['aes128-ctr', 'aes192-ctr', 'aes256-ctr', 'arcfour256', 'arcfour128', 'aes128-cbc', '3des-cbc', 'blowfish-cbc', 'cast128-cbc', 'aes192-cbc', 'aes256-cbc', 'arcfour', 'rijndael-cbc@lysator.liu.se'] client mac:['hmac-md5', 'hmac-sha1', 'umac-64@openssh.com', 'hmac-ripemd160', 'hmac-ripemd160@openssh.com', 'hmac-sha1-96', 'hmac-md5-96'] server mac:['hmac-md5', 'hmac-sha1', 'umac-64@openssh.com', 'hmac-ripemd160', 'hmac-ripemd160@openssh.com', 'hmac-sha1-96', 'hmac-md5-96'] client compress:['none', 'zlib@openssh.com'] server compress:['none', 'zlib@openssh.com'] client lang:[''] server lang:[''] kex follows?False
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.093] thr=1   ssh.transport: Ciphers agreed: local=aes128-ctr, remote=aes128-ctr
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.093] thr=1   ssh.transport: using kex diffie-hellman-group1-sha1; server key type ssh-rsa; cipher: local aes128-ctr, remote aes128-ctr; mac: local hmac-sha1, remote hmac-sha1; compression: local none, remote none
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.183] thr=1   ssh.transport: Switch to new keys ...
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.224] thr=2   ssh.transport: Trying SSH agent key cda5638f390e166864444b1093b91017
DEB [20120328-11:39:29.272] thr=1   ssh.transport: userauth is OK
INF [20120328-11:39:53.310] thr=1   ssh.transport: Authentication (publickey) failed.
DEB [20120328-11:41:29.076] thr=1   ssh.transport: EOF in transport thread

    Hmm, that’s strange, I ran the command as:
    fab diskfree -H xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -u root

    But what is this? 

    $ cat ./fabfile.py
from fabric.api import *
import ssh
ssh.util.log_to_file("paramiko.log", 10)

env.user = 'bryan'

def host_type():
 run('uname -s')

def diskfree():
 run('df -h')

    Hmm

    env.user = 'bryan'

    Could that be the root of the problem? Could the ssh error messages just be misleading me?

    I removed the line and it worked, so I guess so, is the answer.

    • 0