UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

A level of quoting disappears (because your local shell interprets it first) when you put code over ssh / sshpass. You need to quote some of your quoting.

Code:

sshpass -p 'abc' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -q -t xyz@${server} awk -vHN="$(hostname)" "'/[mM]inimum/ {next} /PASS_MIN_LEN/{print HN, $2}'"  /etc/login.defs

Still looking suggestion.

An awk command over ssh is tricky, because you need two levels of 'single quotes' for the $-expressions.
The previous " " lets already the local shell evaluate the $-expressions - certainly not wanted.

Code:

sshpass -p 'abc' ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -q xyz@${server} 'awk -v HN="$(hostname)" '\''/[mM]inimum/ {next} /PASS_MIN_LEN/{print HN, $2}'\'' /etc/login.defs'

The '\'' makes a ' within ' '
Now the syntax is okay, but I have not checked what the awk command does.
I have omitted the -t (it does some effort to satisfy bad remote applications, but it can have bad side effects).