How to transfer key file when creating ssh command from node.js?

Question

This works from my local terminal:

ssh -i ~/.ec2/mykey.pem [e-mail] ls 

Of course yes. But when I try to do the same with the node.js' child_process.spawn , it complains that the key does not exist / is not available.

 // child process var childProcess = require('child_process').spawn; // spawn the slave using slaveId as the key slaves[slaveId] = childProcess('ssh', [ '-i /mykey.pem', ' [e-mail] ', 'ls' ]) 

Result:

 stderr: Warning: Identity file /mykey.pem not accessible: No such file or directory. stderr: Permission denied (publickey). 

Verified things:

• Variations on the way to the key:
  /actual/path/to/mykey.pem
mykey.pem (with a copy of the file in the root directory of the node project)
  /mykey.pem (with a copy of the file in the root of the node project)
  ~/.ec2.mykey.pem (where it should be)

• Running the command without the ssh part, i.e. childProcess(ls); - works.

• chmod 644, 600, 400 etc. mykey.pem

My only theory at the moment is the problem of passing a link to a file, and I need to do something with the fs module. (?) And yes, I know that there are libraries for ssh access using node, but they use passwords that will not trim it, and in any case, my requirements do not justify the library.

Please tell me I'm stupid, and it's possible.

UPDATE:

OK, so I can use the exec command as follows:

 var childProcess = require('child_process').exec; slaves[slaveId] = childProcess('ssh -i mykey.pem [e-mail] ls', function (error, stdout, stderr) {...} 

However, I feel like I was downgraded from creating a true subordinate using fork with all the nice messages and convenient properties (my initial implementation, which runs normally locally), to having a vacuum cleaner, and they told him to do all the work itself ( now that I want to run slaves on remote hosts).

Answer 1

It seems to me that recently Brandon has been commenting a lot :-). He is again. When you execute ssh -i ~/.ec2/mykey.pem [e-mail] ls , the ssh executable in this case receives four arguments: -i , the name of your key file, the host address and commands, for example. ls -ltr /tmp . When he sees -i , he expects the next argument to be the name of the key file, and not see it as the final substring of -i .

Remember that when you spawn program, you call it directly without going through the shell, so you need to pass it the arguments that the shell would pass to it after the shell has done any extension, quoting, etc. When you use exec , you are actually passing the command line to the shell, so the shell does all of this for you, including figuring out where one argument ends and another begins.