topic Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server? in SAS Programming

How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

kingcu — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 04:54:00 GMT

Hi folks,

I have been following the SAS documentation on this link , especially example 6 to the below code:

filename output sftp lsa
                     host="sftphost"
                     optionsx='pw "somepw"' user="userid" debug;

data temp;
    infile output truncover;
    input a $200.;;
run;

Basically, I am just trying to connect to the server and list all the files under the working directory, but I got the error message saying "ERROR: Directory or file ls -a w "somepw" userid@sftphost doesn't exist.". So, what am I missing here?

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

ChrisNZ — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 05:08:07 GMT

Did you see these notes?

Note: Password validation is not supported for the SFTP access method.
Note: Public key authentication using an SSH agent is the recommended way to connect to a remote SSHD server.
Note: If you have trouble running the SFTP access method, try to manually validate SFTP client access to an OpenSSH SSHD server without involving the SAS system. Manually validating SFTP client access without involving the SAS system ensures that your SSH or SSHD configuration and key authentication is setup correctly.

Did you validate the connection without SAS using ssh?

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

kingcu — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 05:18:57 GMT

I don't see any of those notes. I did validate the username and password using WinSCP client.

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

kingcu — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 05:24:50 GMT

Ok, I just tested this on Mac by using the sftp command line and I can log in the remote server with the same credential with no problem. And when I logged in, I type ls command and it listed all the folders and files there.

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 06:08:43 GMT

You must set up passwordless authentication with your local (on the SAS server) sftp client first, using a public/private keypair.

Since SAS uses an external sftp client which does not accept a password on the commandline (for security reasons, commandlines appear in the public process list), you cannot specify a password at all.

FILENAME FTP allows this because the whole FTP code is integrated within SAS.

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 06:21:26 GMT

Those NOTEs are part of the documentation of FILENAME Statement: SFTP Access Method

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

ChrisNZ — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 06:54:06 GMT

These notes are on the page you mentioned. Validating the credentials is not enough, you need ssh.

Re: How to establish a connection to an sFTP server?

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 07:02:05 GMT

The -pw (note the dash) option in example 6 specifies a pass phrase needed to open the .ppk file containing the private key. It is an option internal to WinSCP, and has nothing to do with an sftp password used to log on to a server.