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I'm SSHing a server (I'm on cygwin using openSSH), and I went into authorized_keys and modified the file as follows: ssh-rsa [key] to command="echo Working" ssh-rsa [key]

Now when I connect to the server I get the output working but then right after that I get "Connection to [server name] closed."

Why does the connection close? Did I do something wrong, or does the server somehow not allow forced commands?

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You're replacing whatever shell you'd usually start by that command. So it actually behaves exactly as configured: Connect, authenticate, run the echo command, and exit.

This is supposed to be used to trigger e.g. automated jobs like backups when using a certain key to authenticate, where the connection is closed after the program call returns.

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So if I wanted to run that command and stay connected after, what part of the command would I change? I wanted to run a startup script and stay connected, the echo Working was just for test purposes. – gsingh2011 Oct 1 '11 at 18:32
@gsingh2011 You could try to run echo Working ; bash or echo Working && bash to launch a bash shell explicitly. I'm not sure it'll work though. – Daniel Beck♦ Oct 1 '11 at 18:33
echo Working ; bash worked correctly. Learned something new today :) – gsingh2011 Oct 3 '11 at 2:46

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