Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I need to write a unix shell script which sends files to a server1 from my server via sftp. Then it needs to again SFTP files from that server1 to another server2. And finally remove the transferred files in the intermediate server1. Please provide me pointers on how to achieve the same. All are unix flavored servers.

Your inputs are greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I would suggest using scp with password-less SSH setup in preference to sftp for automated transfers.

For the first server you could have a cron job running a script every few minutes or so that simply copys the files to server1 and then moves those files out of the way so they don't get sent again, something like:

Code:

scp -pr * server1:/server1directory
mv * ../donedirectory

Then on Server1 do a cron job calling a script that SCPs one file at a time and if successful deletes the local copy of the file, something like:

Code:

ls -laR > listfile
while read FILE; do
  scp ${FILE} server2:/server2directory 2>&1 > /tmp/scp_log_file
  RESULT=$?
  SCPTEST=`egrep -i "error|fail|denied|illegal|no such|error|unexpected|unknown|too long|lost connection" /tmp/scp_log_file`
  if [ ${RESULT} -eq 0 -a -z "${SCPTEST}" ]; then
    rm ${FILE}
  else
    echo "Error: ${FILE} not sent to server2."
  fi
done < listfile

Thanks Tony.

The requirement is that I should not run a cron job from the server1 (intermediate server). But what I am thinking to do is that I shall login using scp on server2 in my second script from my local server and will fetch the data via ftp from server1 using the commands suggested by you. Please let me know whether this approach will work. Thanks again for your help.

Yes you can run a script on sever2 instead of on server1, ftp would allow you to delete the files from server1 once copied onto server2 whereas scping would require a separate ssh session to delete the files from server1.