Support for Remote SAS 9.4

[gowerc]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

My company/department currently has licensed SAS9.4. We work on a server that we SSH into and then use the terminal sas command to run programs. This extension doesn't appear to currently have any support for this way of working. Current work around is just to open a sas interactive session via sas --nodms and have a keyboard shortcut for submitting commands to the terminal however it would be great if this way of working + sas9.4 could have formal support.

Describe the solution you'd like
Integration with local sas + sas9.4.

[smorrisj]

We're going to repurpose this issue to specifically target SAS 9.4 Remote Support implementation and testing of PR #134. We'll use #11 for adding support to target a local SAS installation. Thanks for logging this issue!

[smorrisj]

@Sonny-W would it be possible to assign this out for verification?

[Becky-Williamson]

Tested the following scenarios:

• Create 9.4 ssh profile using VSC prompts
• Create 9.4 ssh profile manually in json
• Run SAS code connected to 9.4
• Switching between ssh and viya profiles
• Verify that Explorer pane is not displayed in when connected to 9.4
• Verify that SYSTEM options can be defined in profile

[gowerc]

Hey @Becky-Williamson & @smorrisj , Just wanted to say that when I tried testing this feature it looks like it doesn't work if the ssh address requires a proxy. At least within our company the main server requires a proxy entry point i.e. we have the following in our ~/.ssh/config files:

Host <ssh-server>
	User gowerc
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
	ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p gowerc@<proxy-server>

If I just enter <ssh-server> into your host config setting it fails with error message:

getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND <ssh-server>

Source: SAS (Extension)

EDIT: Just to add encase it wasn't completely clear I've used <ssh-server> instead of the real server address as I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the addresses publicly :)

[gowerc]

Hi @Becky-Williamson & @smorrisj ,

Testing this against a different server that doesn't need a proxy it appears that the connection / state does not persist e.g.

If I submit:

data test;
    set sashelp.iris;
run;

NOTE: There were 150 observations read from the data set SASHELP.IRIS.
NOTE: The data set WORK.TEST has 150 observations and 5 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
real time 0.00 seconds
cpu time 0.01 seconds

However if I then submit the following on the same connection:

data test2;
    set test;
run;

ERROR: File WORK.TEST.DATA does not exist.

I'm afraid that the functionality isn't overly useful to my team if it can only handle batch (complete program) submissions :(. At least not in how we currently work / use SAS. Would the local sas feature being developed for #11 also have these same limitations ?

[smorrisj]

Hey @Becky-Williamson & @smorrisj , Just wanted to say that when I tried testing this feature it looks like it doesn't work if the ssh address requires a proxy. At least within our company the main server requires a proxy entry point i.e. we have the following in our ~/.ssh/config files:

@gowerc thanks for testing this out. We can look into implementing support for a jump connection. If it's agreeable could we possibly track this feature in a separate issue?

[smorrisj]

I'm afraid that the functionality isn't overly useful to my team if it can only handle batch (complete program) submissions :(. At least not in how we currently work / use SAS. Would the local sas feature being developed for #11 also have these same limitations ?

@gowerc thanks for reporting. It seems like there is possibly a bug in how the session is being handled where the work tables are not persisting. I can look into this and report back.

[smorrisj]

When I dump out the work directories in between the two runs on the same connection, I'm seeing two different directory names in /tmp.

When I look at the run command, it's calling setup and run functions on the session every time the run button is pressed. The problem here is that for the ssh connection provider the setup function essentially reconnects to the server and starts up sas again in -nodms mode.

I think that the desired functionality we want is for it to behave closer to how interactive line mode behaves, meaning that we invoke sas once, perform 1-n commands and then exit when the close button is pressed.

[smorrisj]

Bug logged for the session issue on #155

[gowerc]

@gowerc thanks for testing this out. We can look into implementing support for a jump connection. If it's agreeable could we possibly track this feature in a separate issue?

Yup am happy for this to be a separate issue, do you want me to create it ?

[HwangWonYoung]

Tested the following scenarios:

• Create 9.4 ssh profile using VSC prompts
• Create 9.4 ssh profile manually in json
• Run SAS code connected to 9.4
• Switching between ssh and viya profiles
• Verify that Explorer pane is not displayed in when connected to 9.4
• Verify that SYSTEM options can be defined in profile

Can I get an example of creating 9.4 ssh profile in detail?

[Becky-Williamson]

@HwangWonYoung, information on creating the 9.3 ssh profile can be found in the Details tab for the SAS Extension.

[HwangWonYoung]

@Becky-Williamson
Thanks for quick reply!
Is it possible using this extension when using SAS Connect over TCP/IP without SSH?

[cjdinger]

@HwangWonYoung SAS/CONNECT allows one SAS session to connect and exchange data/code/results with another SAS session. So this extension still needs to connect to a SAS session using one of the supported methods (like ssh), and then that SAS session could connect to another SAS session via rsubmit and other traditional SAS/CONNECT methods.

[smorrisj]

Yup am happy for this to be a separate issue, do you want me to create it ?

@gowerc apologies for the delay. That would be great. Thanks!

[HwangWonYoung]

@cjdinger Hi, I'm trying to set up this extension using visx file because my sas is in offline environment. I downloaded file at this url(https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=SAS.sas-lsp), but it doesn't seem it reflects this feature(support for remote sas). Can you please check if the latest version is uploaded? Thank you in advance.

[GaryLiuTelus]

Just tested and could not connect to the remote server, and got below error when submitting SAS script:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK not set, Check Environment Variables.

My Environment:

OS: Window 10
Remote server in within VPN

Extension settings:

Any suggestions? What value I should assign to SSH_AUTH_SOCK system variable?

[smorrisj]

Hi @GaryLiuTelus, see #202 for how to set this up to run on windows.

[gro1m]

@gowerc thanks for testing this out. We can look into implementing support for a jump connection. If it's agreeable could we possibly track this feature in a separate issue?

Yup am happy for this to be a separate issue, do you want me to create it ?

@gowerc Did you create an issue for this or did you find another way?

[shenzj1994]

Hi @smorrisj , I am having the same issue as @GaryLiuTelus and we use username and password to authenticate SSH with the server.
Do we have support for this type of authentication?

[smorrisj]

@shenzj1994 currently we only support password-less authentication using public and private key pair where the private key is registered with the ssh-agent.

[smorrisj]

Hi @smorrisj , I am having the same issue as @GaryLiuTelus and we use username and password to authenticate SSH with the server.
Do we have support for this type of authentication?

@shenzj1994 if it's agreeable do you mind logging an issue for this? We may be able to use the extension api's secret storage facility to securely support a username/password type auth.

[scnwwu]

Additional requests tracked in separated issues, closing this one.