I'm trying to have a shell script I can use to do connect somemachine to simplify the following pattern
ssh somemachine
tmux a
I've tried using here docs as Python subprocess with heredocs in order to send "tmux a" command
#!/bin/bash
ssh $1#$2 << 'ENDSSH'
tmux a
ENDSSH
however that fails with "stdin is not a terminal". Following suggestion in Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal I did following modification
#!/bin/bash
ssh -tt $1#$2 << 'ENDSSH'
tmux a
ENDSSH
But now all my shortcuts are intercepted. IE, CTRL+C will kill my SSH session rather than forwarding SIGINT to the process. Any suggestions?
I think you just need the -t flag and not use the heredoc. Using the heredoc means that the ssh process doesn't have the terminal as its stdin (it has the heredoc instead) so it can't forward it to pseudo-terminal on the remote side. Using the -tt flag forces the pts to be allocated without having an input which means that keypresses go to the local process not the remote one.
#!/bin/bash
ssh $1#$2 -t tmux a
works for me
I am trying to pipe commands to an opened SSH session. The commands will be generated by a script, analyzing the results, and sending the next commands in accordance.
I do not want to put all the commands in a script on the remote host, and just run that script, because I am interested also in the status of the SSH process: sending locally the commands allow to "test" whether the SSH connection is alive or not, and get the appropriate return code from the SSH process.
I tried using something along these lines:
$ mkfifo /tpm/commands
$ ssh -t remote </tmp/commands
And from another term:
$ echo "command" >> /tmp/commands
Problem: SSH tells me that no pseudo-tty will be opened for stdin, and closes the connection as soon as "command" terminates.
I tried another approach:
$ ssh -t remote <<EOF
$(echo "command"; while true; do sleep 10; echo "command"; done)
EOF
But then, nothing is flushed to ssh until EOF is reached (in my case, never).
Do any of you have a solution ?
Stop closing /tmp/commands before you're done with it. When you close the pipe, ssh stops reading from it.
exec 7> /tmp/commands. # open once
echo foo >&7 # write multiple times
echo bar >&7
exec 7>&- # close once
You can additionally use ssh -tt to force ssh to open a tty on the remote.
This is a follow-on question to the How do you use ssh in a shell script? question. If I want to execute a command on the remote machine that runs in the background on that machine, how do I get the ssh command to return? When I try to just include the ampersand (&) at the end of the command it just hangs. The exact form of the command looks like this:
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &"
Any ideas? One thing to note is that logins to the target machine always produce a text banner and I have SSH keys set up so no password is required.
I had this problem in a program I wrote a year ago -- turns out the answer is rather complicated. You'll need to use nohup as well as output redirection, as explained in the wikipedia artcle on nohup, copied here for your convenience.
Nohuping backgrounded jobs is for
example useful when logged in via SSH,
since backgrounded jobs can cause the
shell to hang on logout due to a race
condition [2]. This problem can also
be overcome by redirecting all three
I/O streams:
nohup myprogram > foo.out 2> foo.err < /dev/null &
This has been the cleanest way to do it for me:-
ssh -n -f user#host "sh -c 'cd /whereever; nohup ./whatever > /dev/null 2>&1 &'"
The only thing running after this is the actual command on the remote machine
Redirect fd's
Output needs to be redirected with &>/dev/null which redirects both stderr and stdout to /dev/null and is a synonym of >/dev/null 2>/dev/null or >/dev/null 2>&1.
Parantheses
The best way is to use sh -c '( ( command ) & )' where command is anything.
ssh askapache 'sh -c "( ( nohup chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
Nohup Shell
You can also use nohup directly to launch the shell:
ssh askapache 'nohup sh -c "( ( chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
Nice Launch
Another trick is to use nice to launch the command/shell:
ssh askapache 'nice -n 19 sh -c "( ( nohup chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
If you don't/can't keep the connection open you could use screen, if you have the rights to install it.
user#localhost $ screen -t remote-command
user#localhost $ ssh user#target # now inside of a screen session
user#remotehost $ cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &
To detach the screen session: ctrl-a d
To list screen sessions:
screen -ls
To reattach a session:
screen -d -r remote-command
Note that screen can also create multiple shells within each session. A similar effect can be achieved with tmux.
user#localhost $ tmux
user#localhost $ ssh user#target # now inside of a tmux session
user#remotehost $ cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &
To detach the tmux session: ctrl-b d
To list screen sessions:
tmux list-sessions
To reattach a session:
tmux attach <session number>
The default tmux control key, 'ctrl-b', is somewhat difficult to use but there are several example tmux configs that ship with tmux that you can try.
I just wanted to show a working example that you can cut and paste:
ssh REMOTE "sh -c \"(nohup sleep 30; touch nohup-exit) > /dev/null &\""
You can do this without nohup:
ssh user#host 'myprogram >out.log 2>err.log &'
Quickest and easiest way is to use the 'at' command:
ssh user#target "at now -f /home/foo.sh"
I think you'll have to combine a couple of these answers to get what you want. If you use nohup in conjunction with the semicolon, and wrap the whole thing in quotes, then you get:
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; nohup myprogram > foo.out 2> foo.err < /dev/null"
which seems to work for me. With nohup, you don't need to append the & to the command to be run. Also, if you don't need to read any of the output of the command, you can use
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; nohup myprogram > /dev/null 2>&1"
to redirect all output to /dev/null.
This worked for me may times:
ssh -x remoteServer "cd yourRemoteDir; ./yourRemoteScript.sh </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 & "
You can do it like this...
sudo /home/script.sh -opt1 > /tmp/script.out &
It appeared quite convenient for me to have a remote tmux session using the tmux new -d <shell cmd> syntax like this:
ssh someone#elsewhere 'tmux new -d sleep 600'
This will launch new session on elsewhere host and ssh command on local machine will return to shell almost instantly. You can then ssh to the remote host and tmux attach to that session. Note that there's nothing about local tmux running, only remote!
Also, if you want your session to persist after the job is done, simply add a shell launcher after your command, but don't forget to enclose in quotes:
ssh someone#elsewhere 'tmux new -d "~/myscript.sh; bash"'
Actually, whenever I need to run a command on a remote machine that's complicated, I like to put the command in a script on the destination machine, and just run that script using ssh.
For example:
# simple_script.sh (located on remote server)
#!/bin/bash
cat /var/log/messages | grep <some value> | awk -F " " '{print $8}'
And then I just run this command on the source machine:
ssh user#ip "/path/to/simple_script.sh"
If you run remote command without allocating tty, redirect stdout/stderr works, nohup is not necessary.
ssh user#host 'background command &>/dev/null &'
If you use -t to allocate tty to run interactive command along with background command, and background command is the last command, like this:
ssh -t user#host 'bash -c "interactive command; nohup backgroud command &>/dev/null &"'
It's possible that background command doesn't actually start. There's race here:
bash exits after nohup starts. As a session leader, bash exit results in HUP signal sent to nohup process.
nohup ignores HUP signal.
If 1 completes before 2, the nohup process will exit and won't start the background command at all. We need to wait nohup start the background command. A simple workaroung is to just add a sleep:
ssh -t user#host 'bash -c "interactive command; nohup backgroud command &>/dev/null & sleep 1"'
The question was asked and answered years ago, I don't know if openssh behavior changed since then. I was testing on:
OpenSSH_8.6p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1g FIPS 21 Apr 2020
I was trying to do the same thing, but with the added complexity that I was trying to do it from Java. So on one machine running java, I was trying to run a script on another machine, in the background (with nohup).
From the command line, here is what worked: (you may not need the "-i keyFile" if you don't need it to ssh to the host)
ssh -i keyFile user#host bash -c "\"nohup ./script arg1 arg2 > output.txt 2>&1 &\""
Note that to my command line, there is one argument after the "-c", which is all in quotes. But for it to work on the other end, it still needs the quotes, so I had to put escaped quotes within it.
From java, here is what worked:
ProcessBuilder b = new ProcessBuilder("ssh", "-i", "keyFile", "bash", "-c",
"\"nohup ./script arg1 arg2 > output.txt 2>&1 &\"");
Process process = b.start();
// then read from process.getInputStream() and close it.
It took a bit of trial & error to get this working, but it seems to work well now.
YOUR-COMMAND &> YOUR-LOG.log &
This should run the command and assign a process id you can simply tail -f YOUR-LOG.log to see results written to it as they happen. you can log out anytime and the process will carry on
If you are using zsh then use program-to-execute &! is a zsh-specific shortcut to both background and disown the process, such that exiting the shell will leave it running.
A follow-on to #cmcginty's concise working example which also shows how to alternatively wrap the outer command in double quotes. This is how the template would look if invoked from within a PowerShell script (which can only interpolate variables from within double-quotes and ignores any variable expansion when wrapped in single quotes):
ssh user#server "sh -c `"($cmd) &>/dev/null </dev/null &`""
Inner double-quotes are escaped with back-tick instead of backslash. This allows $cmd to be composed by the PowerShell script, e.g. for deployment scripts and automation and the like. $cmd can even contain a multi-line heredoc if composed with unix LF.
First follow this procedure:
Log in on A as user a and generate a pair of authentication keys. Do not enter a passphrase:
a#A:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/a/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/home/a/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
3e:4f:05:79:3a:9f:96:7c:3b:ad:e9:58:37:bc:37:e4 a#A
Now use ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as user b on B. (The directory may already exist, which is fine):
a#A:~> ssh b#B mkdir -p .ssh
b#B's password:
Finally append a's new public key to b#B:.ssh/authorized_keys and enter b's password one last time:
a#A:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b#B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
b#B's password:
From now on you can log into B as b from A as a without password:
a#A:~> ssh b#B
then this will work without entering a password
ssh b#B "cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &"
I think this is what you need:
At first you need to install sshpass on your machine.
then you can write your own script:
while read pass port user ip; do
sshpass -p$pass ssh -p $port $user#$ip <<ENDSSH1
COMMAND 1
.
.
.
COMMAND n
ENDSSH1
done <<____HERE
PASS PORT USER IP
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
PASS PORT USER IP
____HERE
I am using SSH to start a background process on a remote server. This is what I have at the moment:
ssh remote_user#server.com "nohup process &"
This works, in that the process does start. But the SSH session itself does not end until I hit Ctr-C.
When I hit Ctr-C, the remote process continues to run in the background.
I would like to place the ssh command in a script that I can run locally, so I would like the ssh session to exit automatically once the remote process has started.
Is there a way to make this happen?
The "-f" option to ssh tells ssh to run the remote command in the background and to return immediately. E.g.,
ssh -f user#host "echo foo; sleep 5; echo bar"
If you type the above, you will get your shell prompt back immediately, you will then see "foo" output. Five seconds later you will then see "bar" output. In the meantime, you could have been using the shell.
When using nohup, make sure you also redirect stdin, stdout and stderr:
ssh user#server 'DISPLAY=:0 nohup xeyes < /dev/null > std.out 2> std.err &'
In this way you will be completely detached from the remote process. Be carefull with using ssh -f user#host... since that will only put the ssh process in the background on the calling side. You can verify this by running a ps -aux | grep ssh on the calling machine and this will show you that the ssh call is still active, but just put in the background.
In my example above I use DISPLAY=:0 since xeyes is an X11 program and I want it started on the remote machine.
You could use screen to run your process on this screen, detach from screen Ctrl-a :detach and exit your current session without problem. Then you can reconnect to SSH and attach to this screen again to continue with your task or check if is finished.
Or you can send the command to an already running screen. Your local script should look like this:
ssh remote_user#server.com
screen -dmS new_screen sh
screen -S new_screen -p 0 -X stuff $'nohup process \n'
exit
For more info see this tutorial
Well this question is almost 10 years old, but I recently had to launch a very long script (taking several hours to complete) on a remote server and I found a way using the crontab.
If can edit your user's crontab on the remote server, connect with ssh to the server, edit the crontab and add an entry that will start your script the next minute. Let's say it's 15h03. Add this line :
4 15 * * * /path/to/your/script.sh
save your crontab, wait a minute for the script to be launched. Then edit again your crontab to remove this entry.
You can then safely exit ssh, even shut down your computer while the script is running.
My server deployment script triggers a long-running process through SSH, like so:
ssh host 'install.sh'
Since my internet connection at home is not the best, I can sometimes be disconnected while the install.sh is running. (This is easily simulated by closing the terminal window.) I would really like for the install.sh script to keep running in those cases, so that I don't end up with interrupted apt-get processes and similar nuisances.
The reason why install.sh gets killed seems to be that stdout and stderr are closed when the SSH session is yanked, so writing to them fails. (It's not an issue of SIGHUP, by the way -- using nohup makes no difference.) If I put touch ~/1 && echo this fails && touch ~/2 into install.sh, only ~/1 is created.
So running ssh host 'install.sh &> install.out' solves the problem, but then I lose any "live" progress and error output.
So my question is: What's an easy/idiomatic way to run a process through SSH so that it doesn't crash if SSH dies, but so that I can still see the output as it runs?
Solutions I have tried:
When I run things manually, I use screen for cases like this, but I don't think it will be of much help here because I need to run install.sh automatically from a shell script. Screen seems to be made for interactive use (it complains "Must be connected to a terminal.").
Using install.sh 2>&1 | tee install.out didn't help either (silly of me to think it might).
You can redirect stdout/stderr into install.out and then tail -f it. The following snippet actually works:
touch install.out && # so tail does not bark (race condition)
(install.sh < /dev/null &> install.out &
tail --pid "$!" -F install.out)
But surely there must a less awkward way to do the same thing?
Try using screen:
screen ./install.sh
If your ssh session gets interrupted, you can simply reattach to the session via another ssh connection:
screen -x
You can provide a terminal to your ssh session using the -t switch:
ssh -t server screen ./install.sh
install.sh 2>&1 | tee install.out
if the only issue is not getting stderr. You didn't say exactly why the tee wasn't acceptable. You may need the other nohup/stdin tweaks.