I can run a local script on a remote server using the -s option, like so:
# run a local script without nohup...
ssh $SSH_USER#$SSH_HOST "bash -s" < myLocalScript.sh;
And I can run a remote script using nohup, like so:
# run a script on server with nohup...
ssh $SSH_USER#$SSH_HOST "nohup bash myRemoteScript.sh > results.out 2>&1 &"
But can I run my local script with nohup on the remote server? I expect the script to take many hours to complete so I need something like nohup. I know I can copy the script to the server and execute it but then I have to make sure I delete it once the script is complete, would rather not have to do that if possible.
I've tried the following but it's not working:
# run a local script without nohup...
ssh $SSH_USER#$SSH_HOST "nohup bash -s > results.out 2>&1 &" < myLocalScript.sh;
You shouldn't have to do anything special - Once you kick off a script on another machine, it should finish running even if you terminate the connection:
For example
ssh $SSH_USER#$SSH_HOST "bash -s > results.out 2>&1" < myLocalScript.sh &
# Please wait a few seconds for the connection to be established
kill $! # Optional: Kill the last process
If you want to test it, try a simple script like this
# myLocalScript.sh
echo 'File created - sleeping'
sleep 30
echo 'Finally done!'
The results.out file should immediately be created on the other machine with "File created - sleeping" in it. You can actually kill the local ssh process with kill <your_pid>, and it will still keep running on the other machine, and after 30 seconds, print "Finally done!" into the file, and exit.
I have a shell script with below ssh command to perform few actions,
$SSH $user#$remoteIpAddress "sudo rm -rf $remoteLocation/xxx/*; cd $remoteLocation/yyy; .... ... "
Directory $remoteLocation/yyy is not available and it will display the error as,
./test.sh: line 6: cd: /opt/test/yyy: No such file or directory
and it is proceeding to the next line. My scenario is to exit from the shell script itself if any command in ssh returns non-zero value. I could add set -e to exit from shell but i am not sure how to handle it in ssh. Thanks in advance.
EDIT :
I have few lines of command below the SSH command. I need a solution to exit entirely from the script and not to execute any lines below the ssh command.
Keep in mind that your set -e idea applies just as well to the shell you open on the other end with ssh. So you can prepend your ssh commands with that to ensure an error terminates the ssh session:
$SSH $user#$remoteIpAddress "set -e; sudo rm -rf $remoteLocation/xxx/*; cd $remoteLocation/yyy; .... ... "
Then the ssh shell will exit with non-zero error code as soon as an error is encountered, and your script will exit as well if you have set -e earlier in your script.
I have to write a script which performs remote login and authentication and execute a local script on remote.
My original code is like this:
#!/usr/bin/expect
spawn ssh user#ip "bash -ls" < ./script.bash
expect "password"
send "abc123/r"
interact
which gives following on running by ./my_script.sh
spawn ssh user#ip "bash -ls" < ./script.bash
user#ip's password:
./script.bash: No such file or directory
However, if I run the script without argument i.e. just
#!/usr/bin/expect
spawn ssh user#ip
expect "password"
send "abc123/r"
interact
It gets successfully login.
Also if I run directly through terminal without script like
ssh user#ip "bash -ls" < ./script.bash
then local file is getting executed successfully at remote server after taking password through prompt. Hence can you please suggest how to make my original code to work successfully.
That's because expect does not understand the shell's input redirection. Try this:
spawn sh -c {ssh user#ip "bash -ls" < ./script.bash}
If "user" or "ip" is a variable, we'll need different quoting. Such as
spawn sh -c "ssh $user#$ip 'bash -ls' < ./script.bash"
Use the full path to script.bash
#!/usr/bin/expect
spawn ssh user#ip "bash -ls" < /the/full/path/script.bash
expect "password"
send "abc123/r"
interact
I am looking to script something in batch which will need to run remote ssh commands on Linux. I would want the output returned so I can either display it on the screen or log it.
I tried putty.exe -ssh user#host -pw password -m command_run but it doesn't return anything on my screen.
Anyone done this before?
The -m switch of PuTTY takes a path to a script file as an argument, not a command.
Reference: https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/htmldoc/Chapter3.html#using-cmdline-m
So you have to save your command (command_run) to a plain text file (e.g. c:\path\command.txt) and pass that to PuTTY:
putty.exe -ssh user#host -pw password -m c:\path\command.txt
Though note that you should use Plink (a command-line connection tool from PuTTY suite). It's a console application, so you can redirect its output to a file (what you cannot do with PuTTY).
A command-line syntax is identical, an output redirection added:
plink.exe -ssh user#host -pw password -m c:\path\command.txt > output.txt
See Using the command-line connection tool Plink.
And with Plink, you can actually provide the command directly on its command-line:
plink.exe -ssh user#host -pw password command > output.txt
Similar questions:
Automating running command on Linux from Windows using PuTTY
Executing command in Plink from a batch file
You can also use Bash on Ubuntu on Windows directly. E.g.,
bash -c "ssh -t user#computer 'cd /; sudo my-command'"
Per Martin Prikryl's comment below:
The -t enables terminal emulation. Whether you need the terminal emulation for sudo depends on configuration (and by default you do no need it, while many distributions override the default). On the contrary, many other commands need terminal emulation.
As an alternative option you could install OpenSSH http://www.mls-software.com/opensshd.html and then simply ssh user#host -pw password -m command_run
Edit: After a response from user2687375 when installing, select client only. Once this is done you should be able to initiate SSH from command.
Then you can create an ssh batch script such as
ECHO OFF
CLS
:MENU
ECHO.
ECHO ........................
ECHO SSH servers
ECHO ........................
ECHO.
ECHO 1 - Web Server 1
ECHO 2 - Web Server 2
ECHO E - EXIT
ECHO.
SET /P M=Type 1 - 2 then press ENTER:
IF %M%==1 GOTO WEB1
IF %M%==2 GOTO WEB2
IF %M%==E GOTO EOF
REM ------------------------------
REM SSH Server details
REM ------------------------------
:WEB1
CLS
call ssh user#xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
cmd /k
:WEB2
CLS
call ssh user#xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
cmd /k
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