I have an secure FTP Server with the login details and from PHP, am trying to connect to that secure FTP Server using ftp_ssl_connect/ftp_connect and ftp_login function and passing all the parameters properly to the function but I am amazed to see that it does not connect.
If I try to connect to that secure FTP Server from command line using ssh than I am able to do so but when I am trying to connect through php code, it does not connect and so I am not sure why this is happening ?
Also what are the other ways to connect to Secure FTP Server using PHP ?
EDIT : I tried using ssh2_sftp but still I was not able to connect to secure FTP Server.
EDIT 2 : Are there any other ways to do SFTP with PHP, please advise.
Update : Added code which used ssh2_sftp to connect to secure FTP Server but it didn't worked and program died out with message Cannot connect to Server
<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect('www.server.com', 22);
ssh2_auth_password($connection, 'username', 'password');
$sftp = ssh2_sftp($connection) or die ("Cannot connect to server");
$stream = fopen("ssh2.sftp://$sftp/path/to/file", 'r');
?>
FTP/S (FTP over SSL) is an entirely different protocol than SFTP (FTP over SSH), and you can't use a SSL library to connect to an SFTP server (or vice versa).
I'm no PHP programmer, but it does seem some options to connect to an SSH server are natively available for your platform.
Like mdb said, you need to use the ssh2 extension in PHP. If you're using Linux, it's pretty simple as sudo pecl install ssh2. If you're on OS X you need to either do a svn checkout, or follow the instructions here: http://thirdpartycode.com/2010/01/installing-the-php-ssh2-extension-in-snow-leopard-10-6/
I've had quite a bit of success with phpseclib, a pure PHP SFTP implementation. Never mind the fact that the PECL extension is hard to install but it's also unreliable and not very portable.
Related
I have installed the ssh2 extension and even have it enabled. i have also enabled openssl. Everything seems fine, but when i try to connect to a server i am getting ssh2_connect() unable to connect error. The server i am trying to access is accessible from my machine, i connected to the server via the terminal but when i run the script on my machine it is unable to connect to the server, any ideas what is going wrong here ?
I would appreciate it if you guys could point out som possible reasons that i can check/debug!
My script is like this:
$connection = ssh2_connect('shell.example.com', 22);
ssh2_auth_password($connection, 'username', 'password');
PS: i know there is a libary(phpseclib) that i can use, but i want to use ssh2 extension
Thanks :) !
I am trying to connect to a remote SFTP server using PHP. My code works fine when I connect to a local SFTP account but it times out for remote host. I have made sure through FTP client that host information is correct and its connecting fine.
I am using phpseclib library and my three line code is below.
require_once("phpseclib/Net/SFTP.php");
$sftp = new Net_SFTP('remote_host_IP');
var_dump($sftp->login('<username>', '<password>'));
It returns false (meaning not connected).
What I have done
I have whitelisted script in mod_security just in case its blocking that.
I have tried same script on my local computer and it connects successfully to remote SFTP.
Any valuable hint please?
Do define('NET_SSH2_LOGGING', 2) before initializing Net_SFTP and then do $sftp->getLog() after $sftp->login()
That'll provide enough info with which a diagnostic can be made.
This might help others. You need to make sure TCP_OUT port is open on your remote server to make it work.
Thanks for the help!
I've had to move an app we wrote for a client to a new server and a remote connection I was initiating with PHP mssql_connect has ceased to work. I noticed that PHP wasn't compiled with mssql so I asked the server admin to install it. I can verify that it's now installed via PHP info but I now get a consistent "Unable to connect to server" error from mssql_connect.
Here's the very simple PHP script I'm running:
$myServer = "myserver.com:5000";
$myUser = "myusername";
$myPass = "mypassword";
$dbhandle = mssql_connect($myServer, $myUser, $myPass)
or die("Couldn't connect to SQL Server on $myServer. Error: " . mssql_get_last_message());
I've confirmed that the credentials are still correct but for whatever reason it seems that mssql_connect just isn't doing it's thing. I'm wondering if there's something that the admin has forgotton to do having installed the extension and FreeTDS. Any pointers greatly appreciated! :)
PROBLEM SOLVED!!!
After all that it turned out to be the FreeTDS protocol version number as specified in /usr/local/freetds/etc/freetds.conf, line number 13 had to be uncommented. That was it! :)
After all that it turned out to be the FreeTDS protocol version number as specified in /usr/local/freetds/etc/freetds.conf, line number 13 had to be uncommented. That was it! :)
There's a good chance that remote connections are disabled on the server where the server is installed. Have you checked whether you are actually able to connect to the DB server remotely, from the IP address of the webserver that attempts to connect to it? Usually, at least in most shared hosting schemes, the database server only accepts connections from localhost. You'd need to add the IP address of the webserver to a whitelist (usually in the server's configuration) to allow connections from the outside.
This question is in line with this question, I am trying to connect to secure FTP Server and it is not able to connect, wierd part is that I am able to do ssh and connect to the server but when I try to do it from php code using few different approaches but it is not working
Approaches:
FTP Wrappers
ftp_connect & ftp_login
ftp_ssl_connect
ssh2_sftp
ssh2-scp-send & ssh2-scp-receive -- Have not tried this approach yet but recommended in comments portion and so would work on this and will post updates later.
Code for Approach 1:
$ftp_server = "ftp://username:password#192.168.1.1:21/{$log_file_name}";
$opts = array('ftp' => array('overwrite' => TRUE));
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$put_file = file_put_contents($ftp_server, $response, LOCK_EX,$context);
Here also am not able to connect to secure FTP Server, any suggestions as to why it is not able to connect ?
Code for Approach 2:
ftp_server = 'www.server.com';
$conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server) or die ("Cannot connect to host");
//Program dies out here and give error message "Cannot connect to host",
//but why ftp_login does not work here, Any Suggestions ?
$ftp_user_name = "login";
$ftp_user_pass = "password";
// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);
// check connection and login result
if ((!$conn_id) || (!$login_result))
{ echo "FTP connection has encountered an error!";
echo "Attempted to connect to $ftp_server for user $ftp_user_name....";
//exit;
} else
{
echo "Connected to $ftp_server, for user $ftp_user_name".".....";
}
Code for Approach 3:
Here am using same code as approach 1 but instead of ftp_connect, am using ftp_ssl_connect
Code for Approach 4:
$connection = ssh2_connect('www.server.com', 22);
ssh2_auth_password($connection, 'login', 'password');
$sftp = ssh2_sftp($connection);
//exit();
$stream = fopen("ssh2.sftp://$sftp/path/to/file", 'r');
Can anyone advise why am I not able to connect to secure FTP Server using above approaches but still am able to do so using ssh ?
Are there any other approaches to connect to secure FTP Server using php ?
UPDATE:
Q1. I tried again using ftp_connect but it just died out and why does it dies out, what are the scenarios in which ftp_connect dies out ?
Q2. Do we have only this approaches to connect to the server or are there any other which we can implement ?
Q3. Is this php language related that it does not support secure FTP Connection ? OR there is any other way of doing this using php, if yes than do provide different approaches as it would be very helpful.
UPDATE 1:
I was trying to google more on the issue and it seems that if ftp_connect does not work than firewall could be one of the reason for it. I am not totally sure if that is the case but I am researching more on it and post an update in here if I find anything useful.
Possible Solution :
Problem
If I remove the "or die" then you get the error:
When running from a webpage:
Warning: ftp_login() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /var/www/ftp_test.php on line 28
var_dump($conn_id); returns bool(false).
From command line /usr/bin/php /var/www/ftp_test.php
var_dump($conn_id); returns resource(4) of type (FTP Buffer).
Script completes.
Solution 1
This could be one solution :
Try to turn off selinux and here is the way or Search : How to disable selinux for turning it off temporarily or permanently.
Solution 2
If you don't want to turn off selinux completely, you might get what you need by just setting the httpd_can_network_connect using the setsebool command.
Verify that it was previously set to "off":
getsebool httpd_can_network_connect
Set it to "on":
setsebool httpd_can_network_connect=1
Turn selinux back on:
setenforce 1
Check to be sure php ftp_connect still works when running under httpd.
Set the policy (-P) to "on" so it persists over a reboot:
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect=1
Solution 3
There could also be issue with company firewall. Make sure it is configured properly and has access rights set properly.
Solution 4
Another approach is to use cURL : libcurl as it can be used to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols
Solution 5
There is open source project called PHP Secure Communication Library (phpspeclib) which can be also used to establish secure connection to FTP Server.
Many cheap webhoster will not give you ssh (hence no ftp via ssh aka
sftp) but only ssl-secured ftp aka ftps (see here). You might
have that problem. As others suggested, use filezilla or
another ftp client to test your credits and chosen security method
beforehand.
ftp_ssl_connect() at least under windows will be a long journey,
since you have to compile your own php binaries, see here.
As this php contributor rightfully points out, no secure
connection is secure, as long as you don't know, who you are talking
too, aka „peer certification“ through valid certificates.
phpseclib is probably your best bet. But I haven't figure out, how to
ensure, it uses peer verification (guessing, the truth is in
openssl.conf ...)
So even at the time of writing, I wonder more than ever, if
peer-validated ftps (ftp with ssl/tls authentification) is possible... also see my question here.
As for ´ftp via ssh´ alias ´sftp´: No direct advice, but note, that many cheap 'non-dedicated server' webhosts do not support it (which is bad). Company firewalls might block the relevant ports.
As for 'ftp using ssl/tls' alias 'ftps': Your answer is here. Don't waste time on ftp_ssl_connect() :-)
(Yes, it's poorly documented on the php site, to say the least)
This page has what you seek (I think)
http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/make_ssh_connections_with_php/
and here are the manual pages
http://php.net/manual/en/book.ssh2.php
I, too, encountered quite a lot of issues when dealing with encrypted connections.
First thing is to check the protocol you are looking to use. Secure FTP is most commonly refearing to FTP over SHH but can also mean SCP, SFTP or FTPS.
One way to figure out is to check connecting using a client like filezilla.
If the protocol is handled via a PHP module, the best approach is indeed, to use it. In this case, you need to make sure that, in addition to the protocol-related one, the OPENSSL module is installed for php.
There are some cases where the module support still won't work. In this case, using the libcurl module is one option. This is the case for instance when you need to use a client certificate.
Unfortunately, here again, you may encounter some problems due to the partial support of libcurl in the php module. One scenario I experimented is when the server certificate is judged invalid by the module.
The last solution I usually use is to run the curl binary from an exec statement, for the later case using the "-k" switch.
I tried the phpseclib library and it works in Windows and Linux.
If you are using composer, just add in your require section :
"phpseclib/phpseclib": "0.3.*#dev"
And then, you can do this : http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/sftp/examples.html#put
I want to use ssh, something like this:
ssh -D 9999 username#ip-address-of-ssh-server
But within php CURL, but I don't really see how this could be done?
I noticed “CURLPROXY_SOCKS5” as a type in the php site, but guess that wouldn’t work since it isn’t really socks, it’s ssh…
I’m currently using this code:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, ‘ip:port');
But I'm using a free proxy and it’s rather slow and unreliable, I'm also sending sensitive information over this proxy. This is why I want to proxy it over a save server I trust, but I only have ssh setup on it and it’s unable to host a proper proxy.
You can use both libssh2 and curl from within a PHP script.
First you need to get the ssh2 library from the PECL site. Alternatively, the PEAR package has SSH2 support too.
After installing you can then read the ssh2 documentation on setting up a tunnel.
In your script you can then set up the tunnel.
After the tunnel is set up in the script you can specify the CURL proxy.
Perform your CURL operation.
Release the tunnel resource and close the connection in your script.
I'm not a PHP expert, but here's a rough example:
<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect(ip-address-of-ssh-server, 22);
ssh2_auth_pubkey_file($connection, 'username', 'id_dsa.pub', 'id_dsa');
$tunnel = ssh2_tunnel($connection, '127.0.0.1', 9999);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, ‘127.0.0.1:9999');
// perform curl operations
// The connection and tunnel will die at the and of the session.
?>
The simplest option
Another option to consider is using sftp (ftp over ssh) instead of CURL... this is probably the recommended way to copy a file from one server to another securely in PHP...
Even simpler example:
<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect(ip-address-of-ssh-server, 22);
ssh2_auth_password($connection, 'username', 'password');
ssh2_scp_send($connection, '/local/filename', '/remote/filename', 0644);
?>
according to manpage the -D does create a socks proxy.
-D [bind_address:]port
Specifies a local ``dynamic'' application-level port forwarding.
This works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local
side, optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a
connection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and the application protocol is then used to
determine where to connect to from the remote machine. Currently
the SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 protocols are supported, and ssh will act
as a SOCKS server. Only root can forward privileged ports. Dy-
namic port forwardings can also be specified in the configuration
file.
You could use ssh2 module and ssh2_tunnel function to create ssh tunnel throu remote server.
Examples available: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ssh2-tunnel.php
See my comment on Qwerty's proposed solution. I think you are looking in the wrong direction to try to solve this question. Instead, you should just use cURL and create a personal certificate for yourself. You say you want to use SSH for safety, but why not a certificate instead?
This site will let you easily create one
http://www.cacert.org/
Since it's just for you, you can add an exception to your browsers so they won't complain of a bad certificate. No need for ssh!
To open the SSH tunnel only for the duration of your script, you probably would need to use PHP forks. In one process, open the SSH tunnel (-D - you need to do some work to make sure you're not colliding on ports here), and in the other process, use CURL with socks proxy config. When your transfer is done, signal the ssh fork to terminate so the connection gets torn down.
Keep in mind that while the tunnel is open, other users on the same machine can also proxy on that port if they wanted to. With that in mind, it might be a better idea to use the -L 1234:remotehost:80 flag, and just get the URL http://localhost:1234/some/uri
If things go wrong with this, you may find orphaned SSH tunnels on your server though, so I would call this somewhat fragile.