mkj/dropbear

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2371 stars · 469 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Dropbear is a small SSH server and client written in C, designed for low memory and disk footprints. It is widely used on embedded Linux systems such as wireless routers and supports OpenSSH-compatible public key authentication.

Use cases

• run an ssh server on an embedded linux router
• lightweight ssh server for memory-constrained devices
• ssh client that fits in a tiny static binary
• replace openssh on a low-resource system
• single busybox-style binary with ssh server client and keygen
• tunnel through multiple ssh hosts in one command

When to choose

• you need SSH on an embedded or memory-constrained Linux system
• you want a tiny statically linked ssh server or client
• you want a busybox-style multi-call ssh binary to save disk space
• you need OpenSSH-compatible authorized_keys public key auth in a small package

When to avoid

• you need full OpenSSH feature parity such as encrypted hostkeys
• you need GSSAPI, Kerberos, or advanced OpenSSH options
• you are on a full desktop/server where OpenSSH is already available and size is not a concern

Facets

application · maturity stable

ssh security cryptography cli security networking embedded-systems developer-tools self-hosted windows bsd embedded cross-platform cli ssh-server ssh-client embedded-linux small-footprint busybox-style openbsd-compatible linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="mkj/dropbear")