Shell Programming and Scripting

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help me answer this:
I'm trying to write an if statement that will run test -f on whether a file exists on another server and if it does not then report that negative outcome to a log file.

I'm thinking it should look something like this:
if [ remsh server1 -f /tmp/file.dat ]; then
rcp server1:/tmp/file.dat local1:/tmp/
else
echo "File Not Found" >> table.log
fi

But when I run this I get: "ksh: server1: unknown test operator"

server1 is the name of the remote server and local1 is the server I'm running the script from and table.log is located on local1.

run "man test" to see what test flags you can use in your shell, -e may do what you want. Googling for "ksh test flags" may be quicker.

I use ssh for everyday administration tasks the syntax may be similar to rcp, I think I'm in the Bourne shell when I ssh in.

Code:

ssh user@server.domain.com 'hostname; if [ -f /tmp/file.dat ]; then echo "File Found"; else echo "File Not Found"; fi > /tmp/table.log'

What does rcp do when the remote file doesn't exist? That may be good enough.

It's probably simpler - and definitely faster - to just do one remote command and just check the exit status of your rcp command.

Code:

RET=`rsh <host> 'test -f <file>; echo $?'`     (Use single quotes)
if [ $RET -eq 0 ]
then
  rcp
else
  echo error
fi

if the object of the exercise is to make sure the remote file exists AND the remote file is not that big (> 1MB or therabouts), it might be easier to just copy the file over every time just like what achenle suggested ...

if the object of the exercise is to make sure the process on the remote server is creating the remote file, then ...

you can try this one ....

assumes the remsh call to rem_server will always succeed ...

Code:

#! /bin/ksh
remsh rem_server "ls -l /dir/file" > /tmp/$$
if [ ! -s /tmp/$$ ]
then
     echo "rem_server" >> /dir/missing.log
else
     rcp /dir/file rem_server:/dir/file
fi

test and retest before putting into production ....

I've been trying to do the same thing in a script that goes out to many servers to check on the existence of a particular file or directory. The problem I have is that I need to respond to the "enter password" prompt and using a "here document" to supply the password will not work for this. Is there anyway I can respond to the prompt in the script automatically?

Thanks....