jdbc-sshj

A JDBC Driver Wrapper which connects over SSH to the target database. Please note that only one port is fowarded, so forget about connecting to Oracle on Windows.

This project was created using code from jdbc-ssh but the underlying implementation of SSH has been switched from JSch to SSHJ which seems to be updated more frequently, and knows how to connect to newer encryption standards of SSH.

The Driver will by default load your known_hosts file and will refuse to connect if the host is not in the list. To supress this behaviour, set verify_hosts=off.

Usage

Usage is simple:

• drop the JAR into your project (or include it as maven dependency)
• prepend with "jdbc:sshj:" or "jdbc:sshj-native:" command string before your URL
• put the placeholder {{port}} in your old JDBC url.

Syntax

There are two versions of this driver: the JDBC-SSHJ, which uses buit-in SSH client and JDBC-SSHJ-NATIVE, which spins off local ssh session. Each has its own advantages and downfalls:

• SSHJ is more cross-platform and does not depend on any libraries
• SSHJ-NATIVE can support newer OpenSSH features and can use your .ssh/config but it's not cross-platform. Windows users, beware.

The JDBC-SSHJ uses the following syntax:

jdbc:sshj://[user@]<host>[:<port>]
   ?remote=<host:port>
	[&username=<ssh username>]
	[&password=<ssh password>]
	[&private.key.file=<location of your private key file>]
	[&private.key.password=<password for the private key>]
	[&private.key.file.format=(PUTTY|OPENSSH)]
	[&verify_hosts=(on|off)]
	;;;
	<your-original-url-with-{{port}}>

Parameter	Description	Example
jdbc:sshj://[:]	The host and port of the remote SSH server. Port is optional.	jdbc:sshj://demo.example.org
remote	The host and port of the database on the remote server.	10.11.12.13:5432
username	The SSH username. Alternatively, specify it before the @ sign in the host name	demo
password	The SSH password, if you want to try password authentication.	demo123
public.key.file	Path to the file with the public key. Sometimes needed if not embedded in private key or not on assumed location.	~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
private.key.file	Path to the file with a private key. Please note that newer OpenSSH keys are not yet supported.	~/.ssh/id_rsa
private.key.password	Password for the private key, if any.	demo1234
private.key.file.format	File format. Putty private key files and OpenSSH files are accepted. By default it tries to load OPENSSH format.	PUTTY
drivers	Comma separated list of drivers (class files) to preload.	org.postgresql.Driver
verify_hosts	Supress host verification. Driver will not complain on new/unknown hosts.	off

The JDBC-SSHJ NATIVE uses the following syntax:

jdbc:sshj-native://<any-parameters-which-you-might-send-to-ssh>
   ?remote=<[user@]host:port>
   ?keepalive.command=<remote_command>
	;;;
	<your-original-url-with-{{port}}>

Parameter	Description	Example
any-parameters-which-you-might-send-to-ssh	Anything you type here is going to be echoed directly to the SSH command	-c demo@demo.example.org -r
keepalive.command	Command to run on the remote server to keep the session alive. If not set, your session might timeout.	ping localhost

Please note that the driver will open a local port and forward it to the server. It will inject the local host and port into your original JDBC URL when it sees the text {{host}} and {{port}}, respectively.

Driver will listen on a local IP in the range from 127.0.1.2 - 127.0.1.200 and a random port in the range of 20000 - 20110. On OS X, though, only 127.0.0.1 is used, as Mac by default doesn't listen to anything else than this IP. See StackOverflow for more details on this.

Example

If your original URL was:

jdbc:postgresql://10.10.11.11:5432/demo-1?ssl=true&allowEncodingChanges=true

And you need to connect to this server from the outside, change it like this (split into lines for legibility):

jdbc:sshj://demo.example.org
	?username=admin
	&private.key.file=~/.ssh/id_rsa
	&private.key.password=admin12345
	&remote=10.10.11.11:5432
	;;;
	jdbc:postgresql://{{host}}:{{port}}/demo-1?ssl=true&allowEncodingChanges=true

Build

If you just want to compile the project without running the tests:

mvn -DskipTests clean install

If you want to run the tests (Derby and H2 in server mode):

mvn clean install

Maven dependencies

TODO: The JAR is not available in public repositories yet

You can setup your Maven dependencies like this:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.cekrlic</groupId>
    <artifactId>jdbc-sshj</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Download

Download artifacts directly from CircleCI: https://circleci.com/gh/bokysan/jdbc-sshj

TODO

• Discover why Derby test for SSH native connection is failing.