VB & SSH

Question

 

I will begin by letting you know I am new to this forum and new to Visual Studio.  I am a student at Arizona State University and through DreamSpark have been able to download and install Visual Studio 8 at no cost (awesome!).  I am building an application that I would like to use to automatically connect to a remote host through SSH.  The host is an ASU host and all I would like is to download a specific file from the host to be manipulated further by my program.  I have access to the host, as assigned to me through ASU.  Normally, I would just use the 'SSH Secure Shell Client' program (which has been provided to me) to download any files manually.  However, I would prefer an automated program that eliminates any extra work that I do to the file after downloading (this work is always the same).  So there you have the background story and general idea of why and what I am attempting to do.

 

In order to accomplish my task it appears that I have to buy an SSH ActiveX Component.  Before I do this I want to know that I can accomplish my task with that component or else I would have just wasted my money.  There is only one such COM that I have found which has a trial.  It is here: http://www.ssh-activex.com/.  That is what I am using.

 

Now, here is my code.

 

Private Sub butImport_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles butImport.Click

     Dim SSH As New MySSH

     Dim EXE As String = "cd " & My.Settings.ServerLocation & " |ls -al"

     SSH.ExecCommand(My.Settings.ServerHostName, My.Settings.ServerPortNumber, _

                                    My.Settings.ServerUserName, My.Settings.ServerPassword, EXE)

     MsgBox(SSH.Result)

End Sub

 

As you can see, when the button is clicked, I use the COM to connect to the server and display the results in a MsgBox.  I am doing this to verify that it is working.  I am able to verify that it is connecting because it does return results.  The problem, however, is that it is not changing the directory as I am specifying it to do.  The result returned is always the root directory.

 

Can anyone help me with this problem?

Answer 1

That command is trying to pipe cd into ls, which doesn't make sense. To list the folder contents just do "ls -la path".


For Windows to *nix I use winSCP for transfering files...

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

and putty (with xming for an xserver) to make ssh connections...

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Answer 2

 

Thanks for the reply.  That solution, though, is returning no results.  I know for a fact there are files in the folder.  Here is the modified code (very straight forward):

 

Private Sub butImport_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles butImport.Click

     Dim SSH As New MySSH

     Dim EXE As String = "ls -la " & My.Settings.ServerLocation

     SSH.ExecCommand(My.Settings.ServerHostName, My.Settings.ServerPortNumber, _

                                    My.Settings.ServerUserName, My.Settings.ServerPassword, EXE)

     MsgBox(SSH.Result)

End Sub

 

Any ideas?

 

Given I am new to SSH, I cannot say that I know how to utilize those resources you listed.  Would you mind elaborating as to what they are?  Would they be better alternatives for what I am doing?  All I need to do is connect to that folder (My.Settings.ServerLocation) and download a single file.

 

Thanks.

Answer 3

Well, I figured out one thing.  By removing the -la parameters it returns exactly what I was looking for. Next step, figuring out how to download.  I believe I am learning though that I cannot actually get the file onto the local machine through SSH.  I will have to use SCP?

 

I will see what I can figure out, hopefully this will be a good reference for people with a similar goal as mine in the future.

 

Answer 4

winSCP is the way to go. It's free as in beer.