Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello everyone!

I am trying to log-in to a remote server over SSH, transfer file1 there, perform some checks, capture the results in file2 and transfer file2 back to my local server - all of this non-interactively. Initially, I tried to do this within a singe SSH session, using the following code --

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh

ssh remotehost "
       [[ ! -d /tmp/workDir ]] && mkdir -p /tmp/workDir
       cd /tmp/workDir
       ftp -nv myLocalHost << EOFTP > /dev/null 2>&1
       user myID myPass
       prompt
       mget file1
       bye
       EOFTP

       while read row
       do
              if [[ -d $row ]]
              then
                    echo "$row is present!"
              else
                    echo "$row is missing!" >> file2
              fi
       done < file1

       if [[ -s file2 ]]
       then
              ftp -nv myLocalHost << EOFTP > /dev/null 2>&1
              user myID myPass
              prompt
              mput file2
              bye
              EOFTP
       fi"

While running this piece, I find that the process is stuck after the "bye" in the first FTP sequence. The script is not executing anything after that. So, to troubleshoot, I tried putting the first FTP in one SSH session, and everything after that in another. This time the FTP prompt is getting terminated properly, and the second SSH connection is also successful, but the error being thrown is - I guess putting all the separate sections of my code (i.e., the first FTP, the checking and the 2nd FTP) in separate SSH sessions would resolve this issue, however, it might not be preferable, as this is part of a much-larger program, which I'm trying to keep as light as possible.

I'm doing this on Solaris platform, using KSH. I've also checked and confirmed that my default shell in the remote host is KSH (though, I'm not sure if that would make any difference).

Please advice. Thanks a lot, in advance!

With regards,
Subu

First off, realize that whitespace may get flattened by cramming it all into one giant "" like that over ssh. It may be treating newlines just as whitespace and cramming multiple lines together. A here-document wouldn't do that, but then you'd be making here documents inside here documents...!

Might be time to put all that into a script of its own:

Code:

ssh username@host exec /bin/sh -s ARG1 ARG2 < localfile.sh

ARG1 will be available as $1, ARG2 as $2, etc if you need to pass values into the remote shell.

Thanks a lot, Corona688!

Putting the instructions in a script worked brilliantly!! Thanks, one more time, for the swift reply!