Upload files to allsky-web using SSH key

[MatiasLM]

Hi,

I have allsky server running on Raspberry Pi and I deployed the allsky-website in an Amazon Lightsail LAMP virtual machine. The default SSH access to Ligthsail instance is with SSH Key. However I couldn't find the way to configure SSH Key in SFTP mode in ftp-settings.sh file, only password is allowed.

It is possible to configure the allsky server to upload images, videos, etc over SFTP protocol using SSH Key? If it is not possible, I think that it would be a good improvement.

By the moment, the work around was to configure an SFTP user in Lightsail instance. It is working, however I'm dealing with some issues with permissions for thumbnails creation.

Best Regards,

[EricClaeys]

@MatiasLM. It's currently not possible, but if you figure out how to connect using lftp, I will look at adding the changes.
You can run man lftp to see all the options.

[MatiasLM]

@EricClaeys

Ok, I'll tray.

Only to understand you request. Are yo using lftp command for data upload via sftp/ftp in allsky software?

[EricClaeys]

@MatiasLM yes, Allsky calls allsky/scripts/upload.sh to upload files, and it calls lftp if the PROTOCOL is one of the ftp protocols.

[MatiasLM]

@EricClaeys,

Here is how to use SFTP protocol with SSH Key with lftp command.

1. SSH Key should be uploaded to Raspberry Pi and permissions must be given.
   chmod 400 /path/to/ssh-key.pem.pem

2. Open lftp
   lftp

3. Execute set command
   set sftp:connect-program 'ssh -a -x -i /path/to/ssh-key.pem.pem'

4. Open SFTP connection, where --password input don´t care, even could be ignored. It is useful to avoid being requested.
   open --user user --password pass sftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

5. Execute put command or any command you want, for example.
   put file.txt ~/

6. Execute exit command to close sftp connection
   exit

I was reading upload.sh file to discover how to add the usage of SSH Key and realice that is not necessary to add anything. We only need to set and the SFTP protocol parameters and the parameter LFTP_COMMANDS as follow. It is working for me.

REMOTE_HOST="xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"
REMOTE_USER="user"
REMOTE_PASSWORD="dontcare"
LFTP_COMMANDS="set sftp:connect-program 'ssh -a -x -i  /path/to/ssh-key.pem.pem'"

So, I think is not necessary to add a new feature. May be only adding a section in FAQs would be enough.

However if you want to add a new feature I think we need to perform the following changes. Beware, I'm a noob in bash script.

1. In the ftp-settings.sh file add tehe input:
   SSHKEYPATH = "/path/to/ssf-key.pem"

2. In the upload.sh file, in line 146 add:
   [ "${PROTOCOL}" = "sftp" ] && [ "${SSHKEYPATH}" != "" ] && echo set sftp:connect-program "ssh -a -x -i /path/to/ssh-key.pem.pem"

This is all. Thank you for the support. What else can I contribute to close this discussion?

Regards.

[EricClaeys]

@MatiasLM This is a perfect uses of the LFTP_COMMANDS variable. Thanks for the info. I added this information to the Wiki.

[MatiasLM]

Thank you @EricClaeys.

Sorry, please check that the extension in the ssh-key.pem file is repeated (ssh-key.pem.pem).

[hramos]

Hey everyone. I was in a similar situation, and took a stab at implementing the scp protocol with ssh key auth in #1277.

It's my first time contributing to the repository, so please let me know if we should have a discussion about this outside of the PR, as well as any considerations for scp that I may have missed.