SSH for Binary Data Pipe

cnystrom_at_gmail.com
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: 23 Mar 2005 00:22:07 -0800

Hi, I have an application and I want to use SSH as a binary data pipe.
I am using OpenSSH on Linux for now.

To be able to respond to the password prompt I had to run the SSH
process using a pseudo-terminal. Unfortunatly, according to the man
page:

     If a pseudo-terminal has been allocated (normal login session),
the user
     may use the escape characters noted below.

     If no pseudo-tty has been allocated, the session is transparent
and can
     be used to reliably transfer binary data. On most systems,
setting the
     escape character to "none" will also make the session
transparent even
     if a tty is used.

I do not want any escape characters so I am using "-e none", but I am
still having problems.

The problem I am having is that I still have to use NEWLINES to pump
the data through, which obviously interfears with be binary data
stream. If the data written does not have a NEWLINE on the end, then
the read blocks.

So do I have to chose between being able to respond to the password
prompt (psuedo-terminal), or a binary stream? Is it programmatically
imposssible to have both with ssh?

I just want to to be able to respond to the password prompt, and read
and write binary data to a SSH pipe.

Any suggestions or examples on how to solve this problem would be
greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Chris Nystrom

email:cnystrom@gmail.com
http://conversazione.blogspot.com
aim:nystromchris