Question

I am getting an exception while using SSHJ.

Here is how I implemented it:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { 
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub 
    final SSHClient ssh = new SSHClient(); 
    ssh.loadKnownHosts(); 
    ssh.connect("serverName"); 
    try{ 
        ssh.authPublickey("myUserId"); 
        final Session session = ssh.startSession(); 
        try{ 
            final Command cmd = session.exec("net send myMachineName Hello!!!"); 
            System.out.println(cmd.getOutputAsString()); 
            System.out.println("\n Exit Status: "+cmd.getExitStatus()); 
        }finally{ 
            session.close(); 
        } 
        }finally{ 
            ssh.disconnect(); 
        }    
    } 

} 

But I get the following exception:

Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Could not load known_hosts
    at net.schmizz.sshj.SSHClient.loadKnownHosts(SSHClient.java:528)
    at SSHTEST.main(SSHTEST.java:25)

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Remove the call to loadKnownHosts() method, which as erickson mentioned checks under ~/.ssh/known_hosts by default (you can specify the location as an argument as well though), and replace it with:

ssh.addHostKeyVerifier("public-key-fingerprint");

To find out what the fingerprint is, the twisted way would be to connect without that statement – you’ll find out from the exception 😉