31 Dec 09 Python and SSH
I was fooling around with my webcam, and I got to wondering if I could write a small Python script to upload a snapshot to my webserver periodically. Since I was planning on uploading a new snapshot every ten minutes or so, I’d rather use SFTP to avoid sending my login and password unencrypted so frequently. I had already used FTP in Python before in a backup script, but I didn’t know if the Python standard library had a solution for SSH. After a bit of Googling, I discovered the 3rd party Python module Paramiko (the name is a combination of the Esperanto words for “paranoid” and “friend” — I love that), which allows you to do all kinds of SSH2 operations, including SFTP. Paramiko is extremely well documented (thank-you!) and I had no problems at all using it to accomplish my task. I also found this great introductory article by Python core developer Jesse Noller that was helpful in getting up to speed on it quickly.
Since I was using my webcam from Windows XP, I decided to write my script under the new 1.7.1 version of Cygwin that came out recently. You’ll need to get both the Paramiko package and the python-crypto package.
Happy New Year everyone!
