Subject says it all. Sun_SSH is lacking a ConnectTimeout option which is really useful for things like sftp inside scripts. Does anyone know an alternative?

FYI, I'm scripting in Tcl, so answers specific to Tcl would be helpful too.

Sun has chosen to build Sun_SSH around a relatively ancient version of OpenSSH, for example, per the following link, Sun_SSH version 1.1 is based on OpenSSH 3.5p1:

http://blogs.sun.com/janp/entry/on_sunssh_versioning

Here's a good link that talks about revisions, confirming that you're most likely working with OpenSSH 3.5p1.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun.../projects/SSH/

Based on the following link, this option was not supported in even the slightly newer version:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=155896

This option is available in RHEL 4 - where is openssh version 3.9p1.

This option is not supported by openssh version 3.6.1p2 which is in RHEL3.


Based on this information, if you really need the ConnectTimeout option, you would need to use the at least OpenSSH version 3.9p1 for your application. You can obtain these directly from the OpenSSH project, or from SunFreeware:

http://www.openssh.com/
http://www.sunfreeware.com/

I believe any of the standard packages from these locations will install in /usr/local/bin and you can even specify an alternate path. Simply specify/use the alternate version of the ssh/sftp client based on explicit path, and you can then specify the ConnectTimeout option on the command-line.

If TCL you are using has hooks directly into Sun_SSH and its libraries, you may need to also obtain/compile an OpenSSH-friendly version of TCL that calls the version you've installed above. You can obtain TCL through SunFreeware as well and, I'm sure, from the TCL/TK web-site.

http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/

Hope this helps!