ssh login - execute command - exit

Question

is there a way to just execute a command (or script) on a user (ssh) login and then exit? some kind of replacing the default shell with a custom script.

i want a user only be able to restart a service, but not to have regular shell-access

thanks

Answer 1

The way you want to do this is by using ssh keys, and set the command associated with the key in the user's .ssh/authorized_keys file. A quick google gives me this, specifically the "Forced command" section.

Edit: The second part of this is to passwd -l the user so that password-based login is impossible.

Answer 2

In Ubuntu I was able to create a script that restarted the service. Then in the user's /etc/passwd entry I set the script as the login shell (the last field).

from /etc/passwd:

testaccount:x:1001:1001:1,,:/home/testaccount:/home/testaccount/login.sh

Answer 3

Something Like that?

root@admin:~ # ssh root@www 'df -h'
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/ubda 3.5G 2.1G 1.4G 61% /
tmpfs 96M 4.0K 96M 1% /dev/shm