SSH VPS Connector

Minimal MCP server for running commands through native OpenSSH. Docker has no special integration; run Docker commands through ssh_execute when needed.

Requirements

• Node.js 22+
• OpenSSH client available as ssh in PATH
• A working SSH alias or user@host target
• Host key verified once with ordinary OpenSSH before MCP use

Example SSH config:

Host my-vps
  HostName 203.0.113.10
  User deploy
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Verify manually:

ssh my-vps "whoami; hostname; pwd"

Install

npm ci
npm test
npm run build

Codex configuration:

[mcp_servers.ssh-vps-connector]
command = "node"
args = ["dist/index.js"]
cwd = 'E:\mcp\ssh-vps-connector'
enabled = true
startup_timeout_sec = 30.0
tool_timeout_sec = 330.0
env = { SSH_TARGET = "deploy@192.0.2.10" }

Restart Codex after changing MCP configuration.

Tools

• ssh_status runs harmless identity/system checks.
• ssh_execute runs one command with an optional timeout from 1 to 300 seconds.

Results contain exitCode, stdout, stderr, timedOut, and truncated. Nonzero exit codes and timeouts are MCP errors. Each output stream is capped at 64 KiB.

Security

• Host, user, key, and password are never accepted in MCP tool arguments.
• Authentication and known_hosts verification stay in native OpenSSH.
• BatchMode=yes prevents password prompts from hanging the MCP process.
• ssh_execute is intentionally unrestricted. Use a dedicated VPS account and server-side sudo policy for authorization.