Perl Net::SSH2 pubkey authentication issue - perl

Question

I am trying to connect to a remote SSH server using Net::SSH2. Commandline ssh works fine. I can not seem to figure out the correct auth_hostbased parameters, though
This is my code:
use Net::SSH2;
my $ssh = Net::SSH2->new();
$ssh->debug(1);
$ssh->trace(-1);
$ssh->connect('remotehost.remotedomain.tld') or die;
$ssh->auth_hostbased('username',
'ssh-rsa AAAAB3Nz[..]C0JoaFF9 root#myhost',
'-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED
DEK-Info: AES-128-CBC,FA97214E87562096A7E480C82DAE5EB4
XIMKnj9k[..]kpRo5V
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----',
'myhost.mydomain.tld',
'username',
'keypassword') or die;
The snippet dies # $ssh->auth_hostbased with just a 'Net::SSH2::DESTROY object 0xe17de0'. Setting trace does not seem to matter. Replacing die with $ssh->die_with_error throws a 'die_with_error is not a valid Net::SSH2 macro'. Downloading the current 0.53 version of Net:SSH2 did not work as the script no longer compiles: 'Net::SSH2 object version 0.44 does not match bootstrap parameter 0.53'
Any help on the correct parameter format or an alternative module is appreciated.

Answer 1

Why not using Net::OpenSSH ?
That is a simple ssh wrapper script, i wrote some time ago:
#!/usr/bin/perl
#Simple SSH Remote Executor using Net::OpenSSH Library
use warnings;
use strict;
use Net::OpenSSH;
# see http://search.cpan.org/~salva/Net-OpenSSH-0.62/lib/Net/OpenSSH.pm#DEBUGGING
$Net::OpenSSH::debug = undef;
use Getopt::Long;
my $timeout = 10;
my ($username,$identity,$hostname,$command) = undef;
my $uid=getpwuid($<);
my $ctl_dir=qq{/tmp/.libnet-puppet-$uid};
my $ctl_mode=0700;
if ( ! -d $ctl_dir ) { mkdir( $ctl_dir,$ctl_mode ) };
open my $stderr_fh, '>>', '/dev/null' or die $!;
sub print_help{
print qq{\nusage: $0 [options] -h Hostname
-u username
-i identity
-c command
long options are supported !
};
exit (1);
}
GetOptions ("hostname=s" => \$hostname, # string
"username=s" => \$username, # string
"identity=s" => \$identity, # string
"command=s" => \$command) # string
or print_help;
if ( not defined $username or not defined $identity or not defined $hostname or not defined $command ) { print_help };
my $port = q{22};
my $user = $username;
my $ssh;
my $cmd = qq{$command};
my $options = {
host => $hostname,
user => $user,
port => $port,
default_stderr_fh => $stderr_fh,
ctl_dir => $ctl_dir,
master_opts => [
-o => "UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null",
-o => "StrictHostKeyChecking=no",
-o => qq{IdentityFile=$identity},
],
timeout => $timeout };
#ALARM Timer timeout handling
$SIG{ALRM} = sub {
printf( "%s\n", qq{invalid-timeout-connecting-to-node-$hostname});
exit(1);
};
#init alarm timer ;-)
alarm( $timeout );
$ssh = Net::OpenSSH->new( %{$options} )
or $ssh->error and die "Couldn't establish SSH connection: ". $ssh->error;
my (#out, $err) = $ssh->capture2({ timeout => 10 }, $cmd);
die("Error: %s\n", $err) if defined $err;
if ( (scalar(#out)) eq 0 ) {
printf( "%s\n", qq{invalid-empty-string-received-by-node-$hostname});
exit(1);
}
foreach my $line ( #out ) {
$line =~ s/^\s{1,}//;
printf ("%s",$line);
}
Install it using cpanm (cpanm Net::OpenSSH) or as debian package "libnet-openssh-perl".
See "man ssh_config" for available master options.
I think that script will be of great help though.
Rgds. Franz