sshmq

sshmq is a way to send messages between machines using key-authenticated ssh.

Installation

npm install sshmq -g

Setup

sshmq needs to be setup on both the sending and receiving machine. Because of heavy reliance on ssh and ability for users to log in, sshmq is intended for use with "infrastructure-as-code" frameworks.

sshmq requires two files to be present: sshmq_config.json and a handler module.

sshmq_config.json

Example file can be found at /example/sshmq_config.json. Because we have to setup the machines anyway, the easiest ( and only ) way to specify where a configuration file resides is via SSHMQ environment variable. If configuration file is at /etc/sshmq/sshmq_config.json then SSHMQ=/etc/sshmq. Currently the name of the file is hardcoded to sshmq_config.json. If SSHMQ environment variable is not set, sshmq will attempt to look for sshmq_config.json inside process.cwd().

{ "username" : "ssh-username"
, "handler" : "./example/handler.js"
, "recipients" : {
    "192.168.1.2" : "/path/to/identity/file"
  , "192.168.1.1" : "/home/username/.ssh/private_key"
  }
}

username is the username that ssh will try to connect with along the lines of ssh username@<server>.

recipients is a dictionary of available recipients and the corresponding identity files to use when ssh will attempt to connect to them. An example of what ssh would try to do is ssh username@192.168.1.2 -i /path/to/identity/file or ssh username@192.168.1.1 -i /home/username/.ssh/private_key

handler is a node module that exports handle function that accepts a single message string ( see ./example/handler.js ). sshmq will attempt to require('your_handler_module_name').

handler.js

exports.handle = function( message ) {
  // code to handle the message
}

Usage

sending messages

via command line:

sshmq -s 192.168.1.1,192.168.1.2 -m "some message"

the best way to try to get sshmq to work is to turn on debug mode and solve each issue that comes up. debug is pretty descriptive in how sshmq works

sshmq -s 192.168.1.1,192.168.1.2 -m "some message" --debug

if you don't like attempting ssh connections while debugging, you can do a dry-run

sshmq -s 192.168.1.1,192.168.1.2 -m "some message" --debug --dry-run

programmatically:

var sshmq = require( 'sshmq' ),
    options = {
      loglyMode: 'debug',
      dryRun: true,
      message: 'some message',
      mode: 'send'
    };
sshmq.sshmq( 'sshmq', options );

receiving messages

When sending a message, sshmq will make an ssh connection to the server and attempt to execute the follwing command sshmq -r -m "<base64 message>" on the remote machine ( this is why sshmq must be set up on both machines ).

locally via command line:

sshmq -r -m "c29tZSBtZXNzYWdl"

*note: sshmq encodes messages in base64 so that an arbitrary message can be sent

just like when sending, we can receive in debug mode or do a dry-run.

sshmq -r -m "c29tZSBtZXNzYWdl" --debug
sshmq -r -m "c29tZSBtZXNzYWdl" --debug --dry-run

programmatically:

var sshmq = require( 'sshmq' ),
    options = {
      loglyMode: 'debug',
      dryRun: true,
      message: 'c29tZSBtZXNzYWdl',
      mode: 'receive'
    };
sshmq.sshmq( 'sshmq', options );