Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello all, I'm stuck with a routine that is driving me crazy.

What I need to do is GET (or grep is better) the latest log file created on a specified directory stored on remote machine.
It's a classic log file, and the filename is like:
20101024_221000_10.92.10.1.log
20101024_221500_10.92.10.1.log
20101024_222000_10.92.10.1.log
And will be created every 5 minutes

So, how can I list the remote directory, then GET the latest log file to analyze it (in the log directory there are other logs but with different name, and I don't need them!!)

Thanks!

This will give you the name of the last remote log you can then put it into a variable and bring it to the local machine with an scp for further analysis

Code:

ssh user@remotemachine "ls -t /remote/dir/*.log | head -1"

If you're looking at automating this process, it's worth setting up public/private ssh keys to allow password-less ssh to the user account on the remote machine.

Thanks for reply,
ssh is a good solution, but as Chubler said I need an automating process since I run it from a bash script.

I don't know how to setup public/private ssh keys (but I can google for it), the problem is that the source machine doesn't have a fixed IP (don't know if this can be a problem).

Is there any other ways to do what I need?



---------- Post updated at 02:55 AM ---------- Previous update was at 01:36 AM ----------




Well, after setting up the SSH keys IT WORKS!!! Thanks a million!!

BTW, I have now only 2 small problems...
When I use remote SSH (from Ubuntu to Read Hat) I got the following output:

Code:

lucas@client:~$ ssh lucas@10.97.1.1 "ls -t /home/lucas/log/*.log | head -1"
--- Unauthorised access prohibited ---
This is a closed-access system. If you do not have permission
to access this system, then log off now. If you remain logged on
you consent to monitoring of your actions.

/home/lucas/log/20101024_222000_10.92.10.1.log

Problem 1 (the Unauthorised access message):
Is there a way to include in the smh/ls command also a "tail -1" so to keep only the last line??

Problem 2 (file is with all path)
I already know how to extract the part with the filename, but is it possible to include that command into the ssh/ls command ??

Thanks for your precious help!

maybe try

Code:

ssh user@remotemachine "ls -t /remote/dir/*.log | head -1" 2>/dev/null

?

Code:

2>/dev/null

Works!
I shown the following output:

Code:

/home/lucas/log/20101024_222000_10.92.10.1.log

Now, is there a way to redirect the output to a string variable?
So I can easily remove the path and keep only the filename to use it (GET it via FTP)...

Code:

VAR=$(ssh user@remotemachine "ls -t /remote/dir/*.log | head -1" 2>/dev/null )

or

Code:

VAR=`ssh user@remotemachine "ls -t /remote/dir/*.log | head -1" 2>/dev/null`