UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all,

My problem: I want to connect to a remote computer (in the same office as me) which is running a mySQL server, access a specific table and update it, beofre disconnecting from the server. Is this possible? If so, any links/tutorials which might be of use?

I had thought of some sort of ssh to the machine and then embedded SQL in my shell script? Am I on the right track? I'm completely new to this sort of stuff so any help is appreciated.

TIA.

Did you try to telnet to server and use the MySQL command line prompt?

sorry, I forgot to mention, this should be done automatically when a condition is met in my shell script. This needs to be hardcoded in a shell script, not by manually telnet'ing the server.

If you tell us the shell script language you are using it would
help us give you a specific example.

One idea would be to use ssh. In perl there is the module
use Net::SSH::Perl

then run MySQL command similar to this
$ssh->login(user, pass);
$ssh->cmd(update[table]);

I personaly would use PHP.

Have unix run the script automatically.

I've only just started shelling, and don't really have any experience using perl or PHP. I'm going to try and 'build' my way up to the problem, as the learning curve for a lot of the problems my boss is giving me are quite steep.

I've simply started with:

mysql -h localhost -u unix_username -punix_password

which brings me into:

mysql>

From here I can 'toy around' in mysql, which I haven't done for a while. I think I should be able to replace the 'localhost' with the machine I am trying to connect to and take it from there.

Thanks for the replies, no doubt I'll run into problems over the next few days and be straight back in this forum! Where would I be without it!

OK, avoiding the use of perl/PHP and simply scripting using the 'bash' shell, how can I execute MySQL commands?

Example script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# A simple script to create a small SQL table
#!/bin/bash

if ls -l | grep process
then
        mysql
        CREATE TABLE (......................);
        QUIT
else
        echo 0
fi

The above syntax does not work. Is there a way of 'embedding' MySQL syntax into a shell script? Is there something simliar to embedding Javascript into HTML (ie use of <--! ...... --> tags before and after the actual embedded script)? Also it would be very useful if I could insert variable values from the shell script into the MySQL table (eg if $1 has value 'dog' in the shell script, inserting the value 'dog' into a MySQL table automatically) Is this possible using the bash shell?

Any help appreciated.

added code tags for readability --oombera

I think you are trying to kill elephant with fly swatter.

Bash may not be the right tool, but it would be interesting to see you get bash to manipulate MySQL.

Java, Perl, C/C++, PHP, Korn, python, etc., all have API's, but bash/born shell does not seem to have one.