How to Change Directories in Paramiko (Using SFTP chdir() or Chained Shell Commands)

Change directories in Paramiko using SFTP’s sftp.chdir(‘/path’) for file operations or chain shell commands like exec_command(‘cd /tmp && ls’) for interactive sessions. You can do this by opening a new channel using paramiko and then executing the shell command using the exec_command method of the channel object.

Here’s an example of how you can change to the /tmp directory using Paramiko:

import paramiko

# Create an SSH client
ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()

# Connect to the remote server
ssh.connect('hostname', username='user', password='pass')

# Open a new channel
channel = ssh.get_transport().open_session()

# Start a shell on the channel
channel.get_pty()
channel.invoke_shell()

# Execute the cd command to change to the /tmp directory
channel.exec_command('cd /tmp')

# Close the channel
channel.close()

# Close the SSH client
ssh.close()

For persistent directory changes across multiple commands in Paramiko, use invoke_shell() + channel.send(‘cd /tmp\\n’) instead of separate exec_command() calls, which spawn new shells each time. Then we open a new channel using the open_session method of the transport object returned by get_transport. We start a shell on the channel using the invoke_shell method and execute the cd command to change to the /tmp directory using the exec_command method. Finally, we close the channel and the SSH client.