How to run CLI app (preferably Node) when user connects to server via SSH

Question

If I wanted to run a CLI app whereby users connecting to my server would SSH to the box and be able to run commands, how would I go about doing that?

Is there a way of tying the SSH connection to a commander.js app for example?

All examples I can find are for commands being entered locally on the box and rely on the user entering .

I just want the user to have an interactive shell with a prompt where commands can be entered directly without any app name.

If there is any reference documentation for this type of setup that would be very helpful.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you wanted to restrict the user to a specific command and they are using private keys for authentication, you could use a line like this in /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys :

command="node foo.js",no-port-forwarding,no-x11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding ssh-rsa ....

Then when they connect and start a session, node foo.js will automatically execute no matter what program they try to start.