Connect to a server using SSH and a pem / key with golang

Question

I\'m trying to connect to an amazon AWS linux server with a key using the [ssh][1] package of Go programming language. However the package documentation is a bit cryptic/con

Answer 1

You need to use ssh.PublicKeys to turn a list of ssh.Signers into an ssh.AuthMethod. You can use ssh.ParsePrivateKey to get a Signer from the pem bytes, or if you need to use an rsa, dsa or ecdsa private key, you can give those to ssh.NewSignerFromKey.

Here's an example fleshed out a bit with Agent support too (since using an agent is usually the next step after simply using a key file).

sock, err := net.Dial("unix", os.Getenv("SSH_AUTH_SOCK"))
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

agent := agent.NewClient(sock)

signers, err := agent.Signers()
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

// or get the signer from your private key file directly
// signer, err := ssh.ParsePrivateKey(pemBytes)
// if err != nil {
//     log.Fatal(err)
// }

auths := []ssh.AuthMethod{ssh.PublicKeys(signers...)}

cfg := &ssh.ClientConfig{
    User: "username",
    Auth: auths,
}
cfg.SetDefaults()

client, err := ssh.Dial("tcp", "aws-hostname:22", cfg)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

session, err = client.NewSession()
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

log.Println("we have a session!")

...