SimpleGate makes it possible to use net/ssh/gateway’s capabilities in a simple to use way. This makes it possible to write simple scripts that access servers that are located several hops inside a network.

The core gateway chaining logic was taken from Capistrano, but it has been rewritten to be useful in a more generic way than Capistrano allows.

SimpleGate’s Router class makes it possible to automatically find a route through a maze of servers instead of having to manually define gateway chains. An added benefit is that a change to one server’s connections no longer requires you to update all other servers if they relied on it as a gateway.

SimpleGate is simple, meaning it does not (yet) do fancy things such as using ~/.ssh. Because of this, you’ll have to define ~/.servers.yml and add entries to configure your servers. To use the routing functionality used by the gate_cp and simple_gate executables, you have to define routes in ~/.servers.connections.yml

An example configuration for the servers ‘foobar’ and ‘barfoo’ would look be:

---
foobar:
  address: "127.0.0.1"
  username: "foo"
  password: "bar
  port: 22
barfoo:
  address: "192.168.0.1"
  username: "bar"
  password: "foo
  port: 22

Example of a ~/.servers.connections.yml file:

---
local:
- foo
foo:
- bar
- baz
bar:
- foobar
- foobaz
- barbaz

All keys are names of servers defined in ~/.servers.yml. The only special node is “local”, which is the starting point for all connections and not a real connection.

• Fixed gemspec: add missing spec files and added missing gem dependencies

• Updated Rakefile with ruby 1.9 workaround and a missing file spotter

• Added yardoc documentation to all classes.

• SimpleGate#through raises an error when no gates are chosen

• SimpleGate#through uses local variables instead of instance variables

• ServerDefinition#options is created on the fly

• Added -V verbose flag to gate_cp

• Use STDERR for status messages. STDOUT is used to output SSH responses

• Updated executables to support direct server connections

• SimpleGate#through_to can connect directly to a server without gateways

• Updated readme and simple_gate documentation

• Implemented infinite loop prevention code in Router#find

• Cleaned up Router#find to be more readable

• Added spec to show stack overflow occurs when a cyclical graph is used to find a route

• Added specs for Router#find

• Added a -V (verbose) flag option to simple_gate

• Removed empty method definition

• Added syntax explanation to gate_cp

• Added gate_cp, which copies one local file to a remote destination

• simple_gate is now executable

• Updated readme with version history for previous gem versions

• Added simple_gate executable to use SimpleGate’s new Router class to find a path to a server and execute a command there.

• Readme now has a project description and updated credits for a bit of Capistrano code

• Added mutator and documentation for ServerDefinition.servers

• Updated comment to make more sense

• Implemented SimpleGate#through_to, which establishes a real ssh session through a number of gateways

• Removed simple_gate executable

• Imported SimpleGate and ServerDefinition

• Created project

From the project root, use rake to install.

git clone http://github.com/Narnach/simple_gate
cd simple_gate
rake install

This will build the gem and install it for you.

simple_gate was created by Wes Oldenbeuving. It is licensed under the MIT license.

SimpleGate#through is based on GatewayConnectionFactory#initialize, which is part of Jamis Buck’s Capistrano and is also licensed under the MIT license.