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?
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 "password" ssh user@server 'cd /path/to/dir;somecommand;someothercommand;exit;'
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
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"
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.
Based on additions to @rogeriopvl's answer, I suggest the following:
ssh -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx "cd /directory_wanted && bash"
Chaining commands by && 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 &&:
/home/me$ cd /usr/share/teminal && rm -R *
The command will fail after not finding the directory.
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"
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".
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!
simply modify your home with the command:
usermod -d /newhome username
I use the environment variable CDPATH
My preferred approach is using the SSH config file (described below), but there are a few possible solutions depending on your usages.
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'
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
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
Source: Stackoverflow.com