Installing SSH2 for PHP shell connections – How-to

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In order to be able to open ssh connections within a php script you will need a few things done, few modules installed on the server.

Mainly the install will need 3 packages: OpenSSL, libssh2 and ssh2 modules and of course root access to the server.

OpenSSL it is usually installed on many system so you may not need to install this, in order to make sure that you have this package installed or not run the following on the server:

[root@box1 ~]#rpm -qa |grep openssl

If the package is installed the output will show something like this:
openssl096b-0.9.6b-22.46
openssl-0.9.7a-43.17.el4_6.1
openssl-devel-0.9.7a-43.17.el4_6.1

The versions may deffer depending on the OS you have installed on the server.

If the output shows nothing then you need to install OpenSSL and this can be easy achieved using yum or apt-get(redhat or debian based servers):

yum install openssl (redhat based OS)

apt-get install openssl (debian based OS)

Second package needed is libssh2. You will not find this on your server usually and will have to be installed from the source like this:

[root@box1 ~]wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/libssh2/libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
[root@box1 ~]tar -zxvf libssh2-0.18.tar.gz
[root@box1 ~]cd libssh2-0.18
[root@box1 libssh2-0.18]# ./configure
[root@box1 libssh2-0.18]# make
[root@box1 libssh2-0.18]# make install

When all the compile is done libssh2 is installed.

Next in line will be ssh2 php module.
This can be installed in a few ways like using PECL or PEAR or by directly downloading and compiling the module yourself.

I will use the 3rd install type because lately using PECL or PEAR did not really do the job.

[root@box1 ~]# wget http://pecl.php.net/get/ssh2-0.10.tgz
[root@box1 ~]# tar -xzf ssh2-0.10.tgz
[root@box1 ~]# cd ssh2-0.10
[root@box1 ssh2-0.10]# phpize && ./configure --with-ssh2 && make
If this finishes without an error you are almost done, the only thing left to be done will be to copy the ssh2.so module from withing /ssh2-0.10/modules/ to the php extensions directory which you can find out where it is by checking the php.ini file.
At the end just restart apache and you are done, you can try your script to see if everything is alright.

If after running phpize && ./configure --with-ssh2 && make you end up with an error like make: *** [ssh2.lo] Error 1 you will have to do a small hack.

[root@box1 ssh2-0.10]# vi ssh2.c
Search for the line:
#if LIBSSH2_APINO < 200412301450
and edit it to look like:
#if LIBSSH2_VERSION_NUM < 0x001000
Save the file and run phpize && ./configure --with-ssh2 && make again.

If everything finishes fine you are done, check this how-to before the error part and that is all.

If there is anything that was left aside let me know.

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