How do I change directories using Paramiko?

Posted on By Luke K

You can change directories in Paramiko by executing a shell command that changes the current working directory, such as cd or chdir. You can do this by opening a new channel using paramiko.Channel 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()

In this example, we create an SSH client and connect to the remote server using the connect method of the paramiko.SSHClient object. 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.

paramiko