The Python Paramiko library

Paramiko is a Python implementation of the SSHv2 protocol. Just like the pxssh subclass of Pexpect, Paramiko simplifies the SSHv2 interaction between the host and the remote device. Unlike pxssh, Paramiko focuses only on SSHv2 with no Telnet support. It also provides both client and server operations.

Paramiko is the low-level SSH client behind the high-level automation framework Ansible for its network modules. We will cover Ansible in later chapters. Let's take a look at the Paramiko library.

Installation of Paramiko

Installing Paramiko is pretty straightforward with Python pip. However, there is a hard dependency on the cryptography library. The library provides low-level, C-based encryption algorithms for the SSH protocol.

Note

The installation instruction for Windows, Mac, and other flavors of Linux can be found at https://cryptography.io/en/latest/installation/.

We will show the Paramiko installation of our Ubuntu 16.04 virtual machine in the following output...