Shell script to compare remote directories - linux

Question

I have a shell script that I am using to compare directory contents. The script has to ssh to different servers to get a directory listing. When I run the script below, I am getting the contents of the server that I am logged into's /tmp directory listing and not that of the servers I am trying to ssh to. Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?
The config file used in the script is as follows (called config.txt):
server1,server2,/tmp
The script is as follows
#!/bin/sh
CONFIGFILE="config.txt"
IFS=","
while read a b c
do
SERVER1=$a
SERVER2=$b
COMPDIR=$c
`ssh user#$SERVER1 'ls -l $COMPDIR'`| sed -n '1!p' >> server1.txt
`ssh user#$SERVER2 'ls -l $COMPDIR'`| sed -n '1!p' >> server2.txt
done < $CONFIGFILE
When I look at the outputs of server1.txt and server2.txt, they are both exactly the same - having the contents of /tmp of the server the script is running on (not server1 or 2). Doing the ssh +dir listing on command line works just fine. I am also getting the error "Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal". Adding the -t -t to the ssh command isnt helping either
Thank you

Answer 1

I have the back ticks in order to execute the command.
Backticks are not needed to execute a command - they are used to expand the standard output of the command into the command line. Certainly you don't want the output of your ssh commands to be interpreted as commands. Thus, it should work fine without the backticks:
ssh user#$SERVER1 "ls -l $COMPDIR" | sed -n '1!p' >>server1.txt
ssh user#$SERVER2 "ls -l $COMPDIR" | sed -n '1!p' >>server2.txt
(provided that double quotes to allow expansion of $COMPDIR are used).

Answer 2

first you need to generate keys to login to remote without keys
ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remote-host
then try to ssh without pass
ssh remote-host
then try to invoke in your script but first make sanity check
var1=$(ssh remote-host) die "Cannot connect to remote host" unless $var1;