[SOLVED] SSH command works in terminal, but fails with nodejs / ssh2

Issue

In terminal if I login with ssh and run a command like service something reload it runs just fine, but when I execute the same command in a nodejs script with the ssh2 library (.exec function) it doesn't run and i get an error "ash: command not found".

Tried with sudo service.. but it's same thing.

Some commands do work tho, like uptime or ifconfig, but service doesn't and I need that one. The server to which I am connecting is a router that runs open wrt.

---

this is the nodejs script:

const Client = require('ssh2').Client;
const conn = new Client();

conn.on('ready', async() => {

  conn.exec('service network reload', {
    env: {'PATH': '/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin'},
  }, (err, stream) => {
    if(err)
      return console.log(err);

    stream.on('close', () => console.log('ok'));
    stream.stderr.on('data', data => console.log(data.toString()));
  }); 

}).connect({
  host: ROUTER_HOST,
  port: 22,
  username: 'root',
  password: '1234'
});

A screenshot of the terminal output for which:

Solution

If you're getting a command not found error, it simply means your command, in this case service, is not found within the environment's $PATH.

Either, set your environment properly for your connection, or use absolute paths for the commands.

For systemd service, use /usr/sbin/service something reload, or /bin/systemctl reload something etc.

You can find paths of your executables with which command, like which service or which systemctl.

For older init script services, run /etc/init.d/something restart.

Answered By - ΔO 'delta zero'