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From: Andrew Schulman <schulman DOT andrew AT epamail DOT epa DOT gov>
Subject:  Re: How to close a SSH connection from a BAT file
Date:  Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:56:11 -0400
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> Brian Thanks for the suggestions and I was extreemly interested in trying your 
> suggestion of running the SSH client as a service. However I have not been 
> successful in setting it up. Although it does install as a service, when it is 
> started it immediatly stops as unable to authenticate with the other server. 
> If SSH is run manually there is no issue. Currently going through the logs 
> with verbose on and trying to determine what the issue is. 

As Brian suggests, in order to run an ssh client as a service you have to
give it enough information to authenticate unattended to the server.  That
means you have to give the client one of the following:

- a plaintext password
- an unencrypted (i.e. empty password) private key file
- a running ssh-agent that holds the private key

Whatever method you use to authenticate when you login manually, it will
probably be simplest to give that same information to your ssh client when
it runs unattended.

All of the above methods carry potential security risks, but the risks can
be minimized by, for example, using an account with shell access disabled on
the remote host.  For a full discussion of the unattended login problem, see
chapter 11 of "SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide", 2nd ed., by R.
Silverman and D. Barrett.

A.


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