Passing multiple variables from local bash to remote bash script without gobbling - linux

I'm having trouble sending multiple variables to a remote bash script without gobbling occurring.
For the sake of this question the variable $timestamp contains 12-12-15 19:45:21
ssh user#serverip "/usr/path/to/script.sh http://www.web.com/$1 http://web.com/$2 $timestamp";
I am sending 3 variables to script.sh
Two URLs with an amended file name in the form of a variable on the end and then my $timestamp variable
But on myscript.sh, when I try to insert $timestamp into a mysql database it only see's the first part of the date before the white space :
12-12-15
So my quotes around the command aren't preventing gobbling. Do I need to quote each variable separately?

ssh user#serverip "/usr/path/to/script.sh http://www.web.com/$1 http://web.com/$2 $timestamp";
This is equivalent to this locally calling
/usr/path/to/script.sh http://www.web.com/$1 http://web.com/$2 $timestamp
Try to quote each individual argument passed
ssh user#serverip "/usr/path/to/script.sh 'http://www.web.com/$1' 'http://web.com/$2' '$timestamp'";
You can also print each argument in the script to see what's being passed... e.g. echo $1, etc.

You can try something like
ssh localhost "printf \"%s %s %s\n\" a b \"last parameter\""

You need to escape the values for the remote host. The correct way of doing this is with printf %q:
ssh user#serverip "/usr/path/to/script.sh \
$(printf "%q " "http://www.web.com/$1" "http://web.com/$2" "$timestamp")"
This works for all variable values. Wrapping them in single quotes would instead result in syntax error and command injection when the variables themselves contain single quotes.

Related

Pass in bash terminal variables to a bash script

If I am in a Linux terminal and I start setting variables such as export AGE=45.
Then I have a script to read user data from terminal variables and process it, is this possible to do?
IE:
user#linux$ export AGE=45
user#linux$ ./age.sh
#script asks for input
read -p "what is your age?" scriptAGE
#user inputs variable set in terminal
$AGE
#echo output
echo "your age is: " $scriptAGE"
#should say your age is: 45
There is no such thing as a terminal variable. read just assigns a string to your variable scriptAGE.
If this string contains some $NAME you want to expand, you could apply eval to it, but this is of course extremely dangerous because of possible code injection.
A safer way to do this is using envsubst, but this requires that the variables to be substituted must be environment variables. In your case, AGE is in the environment, so this condition is met.
In your case, you would have to do therefore a
envsubst <<<"$scriptAGE"
which would print on stdout the content of scriptAGE with all environment variables in it substituted.
Variables are not expanded in input, only in the script itself.
You could use eval to force it to process the variable value as shell syntax.
eval "echo 'your age is:' $scriptAGE"
But this will also process other shell syntax. If they enter $AGE; rm * it will say their age is 45 and then delete all their files.
you could just do
age=$1
echo "Your age is $1"
where $1, $2, $3, .., $N are the passed arguments by order
And then run your script
bash script sh Noureldin
For more Info read this:
passing names args

How to store command arguments which contain double quotes in an array?

I have a Bash script which generates, stores and modifies values in an array. These values are later used as arguments for a command.
For a MCVE I thought of an arbitrary command bash -c 'echo 0="$0" ; echo 1="$1"' which explains my problem. I will call my command with two arguments -option1=withoutspace and -option2="with space". So it would look like this
> bash -c 'echo 0="$0" ; echo 1="$1"' -option1=withoutspace -option2="with space"
if the call to the command would be typed directly into the shell. It prints
0=-option1=withoutspace
1=-option2=with space
In my Bash script, the arguments are part of an array. However
#!/bin/bash
ARGUMENTS=()
ARGUMENTS+=('-option1=withoutspace')
ARGUMENTS+=('-option2="with space"')
bash -c 'echo 0="$0" ; echo 1="$1"' "${ARGUMENTS[#]}"
prints
0=-option1=withoutspace
1=-option2="with space"
which still shows the double quotes (because they are interpreted literally?). What works is
#!/bin/bash
ARGUMENTS=()
ARGUMENTS+=('-option1=withoutspace')
ARGUMENTS+=('-option2=with space')
bash -c 'echo 0="$0" ; echo 1="$1"' "${ARGUMENTS[#]}"
which prints again
0=-option1=withoutspace
1=-option2=with space
What do I have to change to make ARGUMENTS+=('-option2="with space"') work as well as ARGUMENTS+=('-option2=with space')?
(Maybe it's even entirely wrong to store arguments for a command in an array? I'm open for suggestions.)
Get rid of the single quotes. Write the options exactly as you would on the command line.
ARGUMENTS+=(-option1=withoutspace)
ARGUMENTS+=(-option2="with space")
Note that this is exactly equivalent to your second option:
ARGUMENTS+=('-option1=withoutspace')
ARGUMENTS+=('-option2=with space')
-option2="with space" and '-option2=with space' both evaluate to the same string. They're two ways of writing the same thing.
(Maybe it's even entirely wrong to store arguments for a command in an array? I'm open for suggestions.)
It's the exact right thing to do. Arrays are perfect for this. Using a flat string would be a mistake.

Passing variable to `expect` in bash array

I am trying to use a FOR loop to iterate over IP addresses (in a bash array), logs in, runs a script and then exits. The array is called ${INSTANCE_IPS[#]}. The following code doesn't work though, as expect doesn't seem to be able to accept the variable $instance.
for instance in ${INSTANCE_IPS[#]}
do
echo $instance
/usr/bin/expect -c '
spawn ssh root#$instance;
expect "?assword: ";
send "<password>\r";
expect "# ";
send ". /usr/local/bin/bootstrap.sh\r";
expect "# ";
send "exit\r" '
done
However, expect complains with:
can't read "instance": no such variable
while executing
"spawn ssh root#$instance"
There is another question on stackoverflow located here, that uses environmental variables to achieve this, however it doesn't allow me to iterate through different IP addresses like I can in an array.
Any help is appreciated.
Cheers
The problem is with quoting. Single quotes surrounding the whole block don't let Bash expand variables ($instance).
You need to switch to double quotes. But then, double quotes inside double quotes are not allowed (unless you escape them), so we are better off using single quotes with expect strings.
Try instead:
for instance in ${INSTANCE_IPS[#]}
do
echo $instance
/usr/bin/expect -c "
spawn ssh root#$instance;
expect '?assword: ';
send '<password>\r';
expect '# ';
send '. /usr/local/bin/bootstrap.sh\r';
expect '# ';
send 'exit\r' "
done
for instance in ${INSTANCE_IPS[&]} ; do
echo $instance
/usr/bin/expect -c '
spawn ssh root#'$instance' "/usr/local/bin/bootstrap.sh"
expect "password:"
send "<password>\r"
expect eof'
done
From the ssh man page:
If command is specified, it is executed on the remote host instead of a login shell.
Specifying a command means expect doesn't have to wait for # to execute your program, then wait for another # just to send the command exit. Instead, when you specify a command to ssh, it executes that command; it exits when done; and then ssh automatically closes the connection.
Alternately, put the value in the environment and expect can find it there
for instance in ${INSTANCE_IPS[&]} ; do
echo $instance
the_host=$instance /usr/bin/expect -c '
spawn ssh root#$env(the_host) ...
Old thread, and one of many, but I've been working on expect for several days. For anyone who comes across this, I belive I've found a doable solution to the problem of passing bash variables inside an expect -c script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
password="TopSecret"
read -d '' exp << EOF
set user "John Doe"
puts "\$user"
puts "$password"
EOF
expect -c "$exp"
Please note that escaping quotations are typically a cited issue (as #Roberto Reale stated above), which I've solved using a heredoc EOF method, before passing the bash-variable-evaluated string to expect -c. In contrast to escaping quotes, all native expect variables will need to be escaped with \$ (I'm not here to solve all first-world problems--my afternoon schedule is slightly crammed), but this should greatly simplify the problem with little effort. Let me know if you find any issues with this proof of concept.
tl;tr: Been creating an [expect] daemon script with user authentication and just figured this out after I spent a whole day creating separated bash/expect scripts, encrypting my prompted password (via bash) with a different /dev/random salt each iteration, saving the encrypted password to a temp file and passing the salt to the expect script (highly discouraging anyone from easily discovering the password via ps, but not preventative since the expect script could be replaced). Now I should be able to effectively keep it in memory instead.

Passing quotes and other special characters literally through bash and ssh

I am trying to run an SSH command that will invoke a script on a remote machine that writes some Lua code to a file.
I have this script command that executes under bash:
ssh bob writelua.sh '{version=1,{["foo"]=17}}'
And writelua.sh looks like this:
echo "return $1" > bar.lua
The end result, however, is that bar.lua has the content:
return version=1
I had thought that single quotes prevented all interpretation. How can I edit the scripts and escaping to pass the raw Lua code through unharmed?
The single quotes prevent interpretation on the local host. The remote host sees the command line
writelua.sh {version=1,{["foo"]=17}}
which is subject to brace expansion. You need a second set of quotes so that the first set of single quotes is passed through to the remote host.
ssh bob writelua.sh "'{version=1,{[\"foo\"]=17}}'"
As you can see, the quotes start to get unwieldy. A better solution is to simply copy a script containing
writelua.sh '{version=1,{["foo"]=17}}'
to the remote host and execute that remotely.
An example using the $'...' quotes:
ssh bob writelua.sh $'{version=1,{[\'foo\']=17}}'
Use heredoc and avoid all the excessive quoting:
ssh -T bob << \EOF
writelua.sh '{version=1,{["foo"]=17}}'
EOF
This will send raw script to remote host and it will get interpreted on the remote host itself.
When it gets too complex, particularly with lots of escaping, I prefer generating the command on a temporary script and execute it locally or remotely via SSH as required.
But there's an alternative: using echo to store the command in a variable and taking advantage of three things:
Single quotes don't do variable expansion and allow double quotes, so you can include something like "$myvar" without escaping $ or "
Double quotes allow variable expansion and single quotes, which means you can include something like animals='all'; echo love $animals to have $animals replaced by its value, and without escaping the '
Strings of both types, i.e. enclosed by single quotes or double quotes, can be concatenated simply by putting them together.
As an example, if I want something like this executed on a remote machine:
source /my-env.sh; perl -MMYLIB::DB -e 'my $t=db_list("name", 1553786458); print "#$t"'
But instead of 1553786458 I want to pass the value from a local variable:
now=`date +%s`
We could have this:
get_list=`echo 'source /my-env.sh; perl -MMYLIB::DB -e' "'my " '$t=db_list("name", ' "$now" '); print "#$t"' "'"`
You can see that single and double quotes are alternated, so we din't have to do any escaping! They don't need to be separated by spaces, but it improves readability and won't affect the result in this case.
And now we can execute:
ssh user#host $get_list
There's still no guarantee that this approach will always work, so once you've built your command, the safest bet would be to copy it over in a file.
If you can use Perl...
use Net::OpenSSH;
my $ssh = Net::OpenSSH->new("bob");
$ssh->system('writelua.sh', '{version=1,{["foo"]=17}}')
or die $ssh->error;
Net::OpenSSH takes care of quoting everything for you.

How to escape strings in bash script

I am running a bash script that calls mysql. The password ist not correctly transmitted, I guess I have to escape some special chars, like the hash or the dollar sign?
#!/bin/bash
USER=myuser
PASS="#mypass$"
# ... call mysql
Using "..." is already the correct thing to do, but the $ needs to be escaped (\$) if it isn't followed by an "invalid" character. However you also need to make sure to always have the variable in quotation marks as well, as in:
somecommand -p "$PASS"
Try to use "\" before the character that you are trying to escape.
#!/bin/bash
USER=myuser
PASS="#mypass\$"
# ... call mysql

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