resh

resh is a shell that only allows the execution of previously defined aliases.

It is useful when you need to limit a user to a limited set of predefined commands, e.g. to run nagios commands over ssh instead of NRPE.

Usage

Define aliases for the commands you want to allow in the commands section of /etc/resh.toml:

$ cat /etc/resh.toml
[commands]
foo = "echo hello"

Next set resh as the login shell for the user you want to restrict. The user will now only be able to execute the predefined commands:

# su - example_user
Usage: -resh <command alias>
# su - example_user bar
Undefined command alias: bar
#  su - example_user foo
hello

Or using ssh:

$ ssh example_user@localhost foo
hello

Alternative config file locations

You can specify an alternative config file by setting the RESH_CONFIG environmental variable. For example, to specify a config file per ssh key:

$ cat ~example_user/.ssh/authorized_keys
environment="RESH_CONFIG=/home/test/resh.toml" 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 example_user@example

Use resh without changing the login shell

If you don't want to change the user's login shell, you can force resh on a per-key basis by setting the command option for the ssh public key:

$ cat ~example_user/.ssh/authorized_keys
command="/usr/local/bin/resh" 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 example_user@example

Building

To build resh, you will need rust and cargo. Then, from the repo root directory:

cargo build --release

The resulting binary will be written to target/release/resh.

Future ideas

Possibly support an IncludeDir option in the config file, for easier provisioning from e.g. puppet or ansible.
Provide pre-build binaries for OpenBSD, FreeBSD and linux.

Feedback & Questions

If you've got any feedback or questions, please don't hesitate :)