UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a script that generates an output file after pulling data from a local DB on one of my boxes. There are other nearly-identical boxes on the network, each with their own local DB, and I'd like to run the script there too. Copying the script to each box and then running them individually works, but it is a bit tedious. Wondering how to automate?

Ideally, I'd like to execute *one* script on *one* box to collect the info from all of the boxes. My first idea was to have the script remotely connect to each of the other boxes' DBs, but that's not going so well... The other choices I am considering are:

* One script that executes it code on a series of remote boxes. How can that be done?

* Copy the script to each box, and use a "kick-off" script that tells each of the remote boxes to execute a local script. How can that be done?

I am looking into rexec and rshell, but I currently know nothing about these commands. I should probably mention that I can rsh to any of the remote boxes without challenge (the same user exists on all boxes).

Finally, any advice on how to transfer remote output files back to the box that ran the "kick-off" script? Look into rcopy or ftp?

Thanks for your guidance!

try this ... (fix path to ksh as required) ... enjoy!

Code:

#! /bin/ksh

for host in server1 server2 server3
do
    rcp -p /dir/script $host:/dir/script
    rsh $host "/dir/script"
    rcp -p $host:/dir/script/outfile /outdir/outfile.$host
done

exit 0

signing off ....

My solution to this was to write a shell script trigger file monitor.

Every minute via cron the script checks for a trigger file containing the command or script to run, if the file is there, it runs the script, deletes the file and e-mails the results to me.

To control it, I wrote a small shell menu that allows you to send the script to a list of hosts specified via SFTP for security purposes. This is just a standard ksh menu script with an expect function tied into it for the SFTP authentication portion.

Just_Ice:

I like the idea and the simplicity! Just wondering, is it (rsh $host "script") or (rsh $host -e "script")? A pal suggested using "-e", but I can't find that switch in the man pages.

NOW... Let's say that I'd prefer to not hard-code the server names into the "for" loop, but pull a list of server names from a text file. Any suggestions there?

Thanks!

Can't help on the -e flag. Aix 5.x doesn't have one.

On the other question, you could create a list of hosts in a file and wrap a file read loop round Just_Ice's script:

Code:

while read host b
do
  rcp -p /dir/script $host:/dir/script
  rsh $host /dir/script
  rcp -p $host:/dir/script/outfile /outdir/outfile.$host
done <  listofhostsfile

As the hosts you want to run the script on will be in your .rhosts, you could use this instead of setting up another list (on the other hand, if there are (or will be) hosts you don't want to run the scripts on then you would need to add a file of exclusions - which probably makes this too complicated and you may as well just use a specific file!)

cheers

Have you consider using NFS to share the file across the servers?

Thanks, thestevew! What's the "b" for at the end of the 'while' line? Typo?