How can I ssh directly to a particular directory

Question

I often have to login to one of several servers and go to one of several directories on those machines   Currently I do something of this sort    localhost     ssh somehost  Welcome to somehost   somehost     cd  some directory somewhere named Foo somehost Foo      I have scripts that can determine which host and which directory I need to get into but I cannot figure out a way to do this    localhost     go to dir Foo  Welcome to somehost   somehost Foo     Is there an easy  clever or any way to do this

User · Answer

I know this has been answered ages ago but I found the question while trying to incorporate an ssh login in a bash script and once logged in run a few commands and log back out and continue with the bash script  The simplest way I found which hasnt been mentioned elsewhere because it is so trivial is to do this     bin bash  sshpass -p  quot password quot  ssh user server  cd  path to dir somecommand someothercommand exit

User · Answer

going one step further with the -t idea   I keep a set of scripts calling the one below to go to specific places in my frequently visited hosts   I keep them all in   bin and keep that directory in my path      bin bash    does ssh session switching to particular directory    1  hostname from config file     2  directory to move to after login   can save this as say  con  then   make another script calling this one  e g    con myhost repos i2c  ssh -t  1  cd  2  exec   SHELL --login

User · Answer

You can do the following  ssh -t xxx xxx xxx xxx  quot cd  directory wanted   bash --login quot   This way  you will get a login shell right on the directory wanted   Explanation  -t Force pseudo-terminal allocation   This can be used to execute arbitrary screen-based programs on a remote machine  which can be very useful  e g  when implementing menu services  Multiple -t options force tty allocation  even if ssh has no local tty    If you don t use -t then no prompt will appear  If you don t add   bash then the connection will get closed and return control to your local machine If you don t add bash --login then it will not use your configs because its not a login shell

User · Answer

SSH itself provides a means of communication  it does not know anything about directories  Since you can specify which remote command to execute  this is - by default - your shell   I d start there

User · Answer

simply modify your home with the command   usermod -d  newhome username

User · Answer

In my very specific case  I just wanted to execute a command in a remote host  inside a specific directory from a Jenkins slave machine   ssh myuser mydomain cd  home myuser somedir    commandThatMustBeRunInside somedir exit   But my machine couldn t perform the ssh  it couldn t allocate a pseudo-tty I suppose  and kept me giving the following error   Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal   I could get around this issue passing  cd to dir   my command  as a parameter of the ssh command  to not have to allocate a Pseudo-terminal  and by passing the option -T to explicitly tell to the ssh command that I didn t need pseudo-terminal allocation   ssh -T myuser mydomain  cd  home myuser somedir    commandThatMustBeRunInside somedir

User · Answer

I use the environment variable CDPATH

User · Answer

You could add  cd  some directory somewhere named Foo   to your  bashrc file  or  profile or whatever you call it  at the other host  That way  no matter what you do or where you ssh from  whenever you log onto that server  it will cd to the proper directory for you  and all you have to do is use ssh like normal   Of curse  rogeriopvl s solution works too  but it s a tad bit more verbose  and you have to remember to do it every time  unless you make an alias  so it seems a bit less  fun

User · Answer

Another way of going to directly after logging in is create  Alias    When you login into your system just type that alias and you will be in that directory   Example   Alias   myfolder   var www Folder       After you log in to your system type that alias  this works from any part of the system  this command if not in bashrc will work for current session   So you can also add this alias to bashrc to use that in future      myfolder    takes you to that folder

User · Answer

I ve created a tool to SSH and CD into a server consecutively     aptly named sshcd  For the example you ve given  you d simply use   sshcd somehost  some directory somewhere named Foo   Let me know if you have any questions or problems

User · Answer

Based on additions to  rogeriopvl s answer  I suggest the following   ssh -t xxx xxx xxx xxx  cd  directory wanted  amp  amp  bash    Chaining commands by  amp  amp  will make the next command run only when the previous one was successful  as opposed to using    which executes commands sequentially   This is particularly useful when needing to cd to a directory performing the command   Imagine doing the following    home me  cd  usr share teminal  rm -R     The directory teminal doesn t exist  which causes you to stay in the home directory and remove all the files in there with the following command   If you use  amp  amp     home me  cd  usr share teminal  amp  amp  rm -R     The command will fail after not finding the directory

User · Answer

My preferred approach is using the SSH config file  described below   but there are a few possible solutions depending on your usages   Command Line Arguments  I think the best answer for this approach is christianbundy s reply to the accepted answer   ssh -t example com  cd  foo bar  exec   SHELL -l    Using double quotes will allow you to use variables from your local machine  unless they are escaped  as  SHELL is here   Alternatively  you can use single quotes  and all of the variables you use will be the ones from the target machine   ssh -t example com  cd  foo bar  exec  SHELL -l    Bash Function  You can simplify the command by wrapping it in a bash function  Let s say you just want to type this   sshcd example com  foo bar   You can make this work by adding this to your    bashrc   sshcd      ssh -t   1   cd    2    exec   SHELL -l       If you are using a variable that exists on the remote machine for the directory  be sure to escape it or put it in single quotes  For example  this will cd to the directory that is stored in the JBOSS HOME variable on the remote machine   sshcd example com   JBOSS HOME   SSH Config File  If you d like to see this behavior all the time for specific  or any  hosts with the normal ssh command without having to use extra command line arguments  you can set the RequestTTY and RemoteCommand options in your ssh config file   For example  I d like to type only this command   ssh qaapps18   but want it to always behave like this command   ssh -t qaapps18  cd  JBOSS HOME  exec  SHELL    So I added this to my    ssh config file   Host  apps      RequestTTY yes     RemoteCommand cd  JBOSS HOME  exec  SHELL   Now this rule applies to any host with  apps  in its hostname   For more information  see http   man7 org linux man-pages man5 ssh config 5 html

[bash] How can I ssh directly to a particular directory?

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