29. Remote exec and copy commands

Cdist interacts with the target host in two ways:

• it executes code (__remote_exec)
• and it copies files (__remote_copy)

By default this is accomplished with ssh and scp respectively. The default implementations used by cdist are:

__remote_exec: ssh -o User=root
__remote_copy: scp -o User=root

The user can override these defaults by providing custom implementations and passing them to cdist with the --remote-exec and/or --remote-copy arguments.

For __remote_exec, the custom implementation must behave as if it where ssh. For __remote_copy, it must behave like scp. Please notice, custom implementations should work like ssh/scp so __remote_copy must support IPv6 addresses enclosed in square brackets. For __remote_exec you must take into account that for some options (like -L) IPv6 addresses can be specified by enclosed in square brackets (see ssh(1) and scp(1)).

With this simple interface the user can take total control of how cdist interacts with the target when required, while the default implementation remains as simple as possible.