How to use SSH to run a local shell script on a remote machine

Question

I have to run a local shell script  windows Linux  on a remote machine  I have SSH configured on both machine A and B  My script is on machine A which will run some of my code on a remote machine  machine B  The local and remote computers can be either Windows or Unix based system  Is there a way to run do this using plink ssh

User · Answer

Assuming you mean you want to do this automatically from a "local" machine, without manually logging into the "remote" machine, you should look into a TCL extension known as Expect, it is designed precisely for this sort of situation. I've also provided a link to a script for logging-in/interacting via SSH.

https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/expect

http://bash.cyberciti.biz/security/expect-ssh-login-script/

User · Answer

If Machine A is a Windows box  you can use Plink  part of PuTTY  with the -m parameter  and it will execute the local script on the remote server   plink root MachineB -m local script sh   If Machine A is a Unix-based system  you can use   ssh root MachineB  bash -s   lt  local script sh   You shouldn t have to copy the script to the remote server to run it

User · Answer

Try running ssh user remote sh   script unx

User · Answer

If Machine A is a Windows box  you can use Plink  part of PuTTY  with the -m parameter  and it will execute the local script on the remote server   plink root MachineB -m local script sh   If Machine A is a Unix-based system  you can use   ssh root MachineB  bash -s   lt  local script sh   You shouldn t have to copy the script to the remote server to run it

User · Answer

Assuming you mean you want to do this automatically from a "local" machine, without manually logging into the "remote" machine, you should look into a TCL extension known as Expect, it is designed precisely for this sort of situation. I've also provided a link to a script for logging-in/interacting via SSH.

https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/expect

http://bash.cyberciti.biz/security/expect-ssh-login-script/

User · Answer

It is unclear if the local script uses locally set variables  functions  or aliases  If it does this should work  myscript sh     bin bash  myalias  myvar myfunction  myvar  It uses  myvar  myfunction  and myalias  Let us assume they is set locally and not on the remote machine  Make a bash function that contains the script  eval  quot myfun      cat myscript sh     quot   Set variable  function  and alias  myvar works alias myalias  echo This alias  myfunction     echo This function  quot    quot      And  quot export quot  myfun  myfunction  myvar  and myalias to server using env parallel from GNU Parallel  env parallel -S server -N0  --nonall myfun     dummy

User · Answer

chmod  x script sh     ssh -i key-file root 111 222 3 444  lt    script sh

User · Answer

lt hostA shell prompt gt   ssh user hostB  ls -la    That will prompt you for password  unless you have copied your hostA user s public key to the authorized keys file on the home of user  ssh s directory  That will allow for passwordless authentication  if accepted as an auth method on the ssh server s configuration

User · Answer

if you wanna execute command like this  temp  ls -a  echo  temp  command in    will cause errors   below command will solve this problem  ssh user host     temp  ls -a  echo  temp

User · Answer

lt hostA shell prompt gt   ssh user hostB  ls -la    That will prompt you for password  unless you have copied your hostA user s public key to the authorized keys file on the home of user  ssh s directory  That will allow for passwordless authentication  if accepted as an auth method on the ssh server s configuration

User · Answer

You can use runoverssh   sudo apt install runoverssh   runoverssh -s localscript sh user host1 host2 host3      -s runs a local script remotely    Useful flags  -g use a global password for all hosts  single password prompt  -n use SSH instead of sshpass  useful for public-key authentication

User · Answer

It is unclear if the local script uses locally set variables  functions  or aliases  If it does this should work  myscript sh     bin bash  myalias  myvar myfunction  myvar  It uses  myvar  myfunction  and myalias  Let us assume they is set locally and not on the remote machine  Make a bash function that contains the script  eval  quot myfun      cat myscript sh     quot   Set variable  function  and alias  myvar works alias myalias  echo This alias  myfunction     echo This function  quot    quot      And  quot export quot  myfun  myfunction  myvar  and myalias to server using env parallel from GNU Parallel  env parallel -S server -N0  --nonall myfun     dummy

User · Answer

I ve started using Fabric for more sophisticated operations  Fabric requires Python and a couple of other dependencies  but only on the client machine  The server need only be a ssh server  I find this tool to be much more powerful than shell scripts handed off to SSH  and well worth the trouble of getting set up  particularly if you enjoy programming in Python   Fabric handles running scripts on multiple hosts  or hosts of certain roles   helps facilitate idempotent operations  such as adding a line to a config script  but not if it s already there   and allows construction of more complex logic  such as the Python language can provide

User · Answer

If it s one script it s fine with the above solution  I would set up Ansible to do the Job  It works in the same way  Ansible uses ssh to execute the scripts on the remote machine for both Unix or Windows   It will be more structured and maintainable

User · Answer

This is an old question  and Jason s answer works fine  but I would like to add this   ssh user host  lt  lt  ENDSSH   commands to run on remote host ENDSSH   This can also be used with su and commands which require user input   note the   escaped heredoc   Edit  Since this answer keeps getting bits of traffic  i would add even more info to this wonderful use of heredoc   You can nest commands with this syntax  and thats the only way nesting seems to work  in a sane way   ssh user host  lt  lt  ENDSSH   commands to run on remote host ssh user host2  lt  lt  END2    Another bunch of commands on another host wall  lt  lt  ENDWALL  Error  Out of cheese ENDWALL ftp ftp secureftp-test com  lt  lt  ENDFTP  test test ls ENDFTP END2 ENDSSH   You can actually have a conversation with some services like telnet  ftp  etc  But remember that heredoc just sends the stdin as text  it doesn t wait for response between lines  Edit  I just found out that you can indent the insides with tabs if you use  lt  lt -END    ssh user host  lt  lt - ENDSSH       commands to run on remote host     ssh user host2  lt  lt - END2            Another bunch of commands on another host         wall  lt  lt - ENDWALL              Error  Out of cheese         ENDWALL         ftp ftp secureftp-test com  lt  lt - ENDFTP              test             test             ls         ENDFTP     END2 ENDSSH    I think this should work   Also see http   tldp org LDP abs html here-docs html

User · Answer

Assuming you mean you want to do this automatically from a "local" machine, without manually logging into the "remote" machine, you should look into a TCL extension known as Expect, it is designed precisely for this sort of situation. I've also provided a link to a script for logging-in/interacting via SSH.

https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/expect

http://bash.cyberciti.biz/security/expect-ssh-login-script/

User · Answer

Try running ssh user remote sh   script unx

User · Answer

The answer here  https   stackoverflow com a 2732991 4752883  works great if you re trying to run a script on a remote linux machine using plink or ssh  It will work if the script has multiple lines on linux     However  if you are trying to run a batch script located on a local linux windows machine and your remote machine is Windows  and it consists of multiple lines using     plink root MachineB -m local script bat  wont work   Only the first line of the script will be executed  This is probably a limitation of plink   Solution 1   To run a multiline batch script  especially if it s relatively simple  consisting of a few lines    If your original batch script is as follows  cd C  Users ipython user Desktop  python filename py   you can combine the lines together using the   amp  amp   separator as follows in your local script bat file  https   stackoverflow com a 8055390 4752883   cd C  Users ipython user Desktop  amp  amp  python filename py   After this change  you can then run the script as pointed out here by  JasonR Coombs  https   stackoverflow com a 2732991 4752883 with    plink root MachineB -m local script bat    Solution 2   If your batch script is relatively complicated  it may be better to use a batch script which encapsulates the plink command as well as follows as pointed out here by  Martin https   stackoverflow com a 32196999 4752883    rem Open tunnel in the background start plink exe -ssh  username   hostname  -L 3307 127 0 0 1 3306 -i   SSH key   -N  rem Wait a second to let Plink establish the tunnel  timeout  t 1  rem Run the task using the tunnel  C  Program Files R R-3 2 1 bin x64 R exe  CMD BATCH qidash R  rem Kill the tunnel taskkill  im plink exe

User · Answer

Also  don t forget to escape variables if you want to pick them up from the destination host   This has caught me out in the past   For example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo   HOME    prints out  home user2  while  user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo  HOME    prints out  home user  Another example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo hello world   awk   print   1      prints out  hello  correctly

User · Answer

I use this one to run a shell script on a remote machine  tested on  bin bash    ssh deploy host    home deploy path to script sh

User · Answer

This is an extension to YarekT s answer to combine inline remote commands with passing ENV variables from the local machine to the remote host so you can parameterize your scripts on the remote side   ssh user host ARG1  ARG1 ARG2  ARG2  bash -s   lt  lt  ENDSSH      commands to run on remote host   echo  ARG1  ARG2 ENDSSH   I found this exceptionally helpful by keeping it all in one script so it s very readable and maintainable   Why this works   ssh supports the following syntax      ssh user host remote command   In bash we can specify environment variables to define prior to running a command on a single line like so      ENV VAR 1  value1  ENV VAR 2  value2  bash -c  echo  ENV VAR 1  ENV VAR 2    That makes it easy to define variables prior to running a command   In this case echo is our command we re running   Everything before echo defines environment variables   So we combine those two features and YarekT s answer to get      ssh user host ARG1  ARG1 ARG2  ARG2  bash -s   lt  lt  ENDSSH       In this case we are setting ARG1 and ARG2 to local values  Sending everything after user host as the remote command   When the remote machine executes the command ARG1 and ARG2 are set the local values  thanks to local command line evaluation  which defines environment variables on the remote server  then executes the bash -s command using those variables   Voila

User · Answer

cat   script sh   ssh  lt user gt   lt host gt

User · Answer

First  copy the script over to Machine B using scp      user machineA   scp  path to script user machineB  home user path   Then  just run the script      user machineA   ssh user machineB   home user path script    This will work if you have given executable permission to the script

User · Answer

You can use runoverssh   sudo apt install runoverssh   runoverssh -s localscript sh user host1 host2 host3      -s runs a local script remotely    Useful flags  -g use a global password for all hosts  single password prompt  -n use SSH instead of sshpass  useful for public-key authentication

User · Answer

If the script is short and is meant to be embedded inside your script and you are running under bash shell and also bash shell is available on the remote side  you may use declare to transfer local context to remote  Define variables and functions containing the state that will be transferred to the remote  Define a function that will be executed on the remote side  Then inside a here document read by bash -s you can use declare -p to transfer the variable values and use declare -f to transfer function definitions to the remote  Because declare takes care of the quoting and will be parsed by the remote bash  the variables are properly quoted and functions are properly transferred  You may just write the script locally  usually I do one long function with the work I need to do on the remote side  The context has to be hand-picked  but the following method is  quot good enough quot  for any short scripts and is safe - should properly handle all corner cases  somevar  quot spaces or other special characters quot  somevar2  quot        quot  another func         mkdir -p  quot  1 quot    work         another func  quot  somevar quot      touch  quot  somevar quot   quot  somevar2 quot    ssh user server  bash -s   lt  lt EOT   declare -p somevar somevar2       transfer variables values   declare -f work another func      transfer function definitions work                                call the function EOT

User · Answer

First  copy the script over to Machine B using scp      user machineA   scp  path to script user machineB  home user path   Then  just run the script      user machineA   ssh user machineB   home user path script    This will work if you have given executable permission to the script

User · Answer

Also  don t forget to escape variables if you want to pick them up from the destination host   This has caught me out in the past   For example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo   HOME    prints out  home user2  while  user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo  HOME    prints out  home user  Another example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo hello world   awk   print   1      prints out  hello  correctly

User · Answer

cat   script sh   ssh  lt user gt   lt host gt

User · Answer

The answer here  https   stackoverflow com a 2732991 4752883  works great if you re trying to run a script on a remote linux machine using plink or ssh  It will work if the script has multiple lines on linux     However  if you are trying to run a batch script located on a local linux windows machine and your remote machine is Windows  and it consists of multiple lines using     plink root MachineB -m local script bat  wont work   Only the first line of the script will be executed  This is probably a limitation of plink   Solution 1   To run a multiline batch script  especially if it s relatively simple  consisting of a few lines    If your original batch script is as follows  cd C  Users ipython user Desktop  python filename py   you can combine the lines together using the   amp  amp   separator as follows in your local script bat file  https   stackoverflow com a 8055390 4752883   cd C  Users ipython user Desktop  amp  amp  python filename py   After this change  you can then run the script as pointed out here by  JasonR Coombs  https   stackoverflow com a 2732991 4752883 with    plink root MachineB -m local script bat    Solution 2   If your batch script is relatively complicated  it may be better to use a batch script which encapsulates the plink command as well as follows as pointed out here by  Martin https   stackoverflow com a 32196999 4752883    rem Open tunnel in the background start plink exe -ssh  username   hostname  -L 3307 127 0 0 1 3306 -i   SSH key   -N  rem Wait a second to let Plink establish the tunnel  timeout  t 1  rem Run the task using the tunnel  C  Program Files R R-3 2 1 bin x64 R exe  CMD BATCH qidash R  rem Kill the tunnel taskkill  im plink exe

User · Answer

lt hostA shell prompt gt   ssh user hostB  ls -la    That will prompt you for password  unless you have copied your hostA user s public key to the authorized keys file on the home of user  ssh s directory  That will allow for passwordless authentication  if accepted as an auth method on the ssh server s configuration

User · Answer

I use this one to run a shell script on a remote machine  tested on  bin bash    ssh deploy host    home deploy path to script sh

User · Answer

lt hostA shell prompt gt   ssh user hostB  ls -la    That will prompt you for password  unless you have copied your hostA user s public key to the authorized keys file on the home of user  ssh s directory  That will allow for passwordless authentication  if accepted as an auth method on the ssh server s configuration

User · Answer

Also  don t forget to escape variables if you want to pick them up from the destination host   This has caught me out in the past   For example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo   HOME    prints out  home user2  while  user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo  HOME    prints out  home user  Another example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo hello world   awk   print   1      prints out  hello  correctly

User · Answer

ssh user hostname      bashrc  cd path-to-file   filename sh    highly recommended to source the environment file  bashrc  bashprofile  profile   before running something in remote host because target and source hosts environment variables may be deffer

User · Answer

This bash script does ssh into a target remote machine  and run some command in the remote machine  do not forget to install expect before running it  on mac brew install expect        usr bin expect set username  enterusenamehere  set password  enterpasswordhere  set hosts  enteripaddressofhosthere  spawn ssh   username  hosts expect   username  hosts s password   send --   password n  expect     send --  somecommand on target remote machine here n  sleep 5 expect     send --  exit n

User · Answer

ssh user hostname      bashrc  cd path-to-file   filename sh    highly recommended to source the environment file  bashrc  bashprofile  profile   before running something in remote host because target and source hosts environment variables may be deffer

User · Answer

I ve started using Fabric for more sophisticated operations  Fabric requires Python and a couple of other dependencies  but only on the client machine  The server need only be a ssh server  I find this tool to be much more powerful than shell scripts handed off to SSH  and well worth the trouble of getting set up  particularly if you enjoy programming in Python   Fabric handles running scripts on multiple hosts  or hosts of certain roles   helps facilitate idempotent operations  such as adding a line to a config script  but not if it s already there   and allows construction of more complex logic  such as the Python language can provide

User · Answer

Also  don t forget to escape variables if you want to pick them up from the destination host   This has caught me out in the past   For example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo   HOME    prints out  home user2  while  user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo  HOME    prints out  home user  Another example   user host gt  ssh user2 host2  echo hello world   awk   print   1      prints out  hello  correctly

User · Answer

This is an extension to YarekT s answer to combine inline remote commands with passing ENV variables from the local machine to the remote host so you can parameterize your scripts on the remote side   ssh user host ARG1  ARG1 ARG2  ARG2  bash -s   lt  lt  ENDSSH      commands to run on remote host   echo  ARG1  ARG2 ENDSSH   I found this exceptionally helpful by keeping it all in one script so it s very readable and maintainable   Why this works   ssh supports the following syntax      ssh user host remote command   In bash we can specify environment variables to define prior to running a command on a single line like so      ENV VAR 1  value1  ENV VAR 2  value2  bash -c  echo  ENV VAR 1  ENV VAR 2    That makes it easy to define variables prior to running a command   In this case echo is our command we re running   Everything before echo defines environment variables   So we combine those two features and YarekT s answer to get      ssh user host ARG1  ARG1 ARG2  ARG2  bash -s   lt  lt  ENDSSH       In this case we are setting ARG1 and ARG2 to local values  Sending everything after user host as the remote command   When the remote machine executes the command ARG1 and ARG2 are set the local values  thanks to local command line evaluation  which defines environment variables on the remote server  then executes the bash -s command using those variables   Voila

User · Answer

Assuming you mean you want to do this automatically from a "local" machine, without manually logging into the "remote" machine, you should look into a TCL extension known as Expect, it is designed precisely for this sort of situation. I've also provided a link to a script for logging-in/interacting via SSH.

https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/expect

http://bash.cyberciti.biz/security/expect-ssh-login-script/

User · Answer

chmod  x script sh     ssh -i key-file root 111 222 3 444  lt    script sh

User · Answer

First  copy the script over to Machine B using scp      user machineA   scp  path to script user machineB  home user path   Then  just run the script      user machineA   ssh user machineB   home user path script    This will work if you have given executable permission to the script

User · Answer

This bash script does ssh into a target remote machine  and run some command in the remote machine  do not forget to install expect before running it  on mac brew install expect        usr bin expect set username  enterusenamehere  set password  enterpasswordhere  set hosts  enteripaddressofhosthere  spawn ssh   username  hosts expect   username  hosts s password   send --   password n  expect     send --  somecommand on target remote machine here n  sleep 5 expect     send --  exit n

User · Answer

If the script is short and is meant to be embedded inside your script and you are running under bash shell and also bash shell is available on the remote side  you may use declare to transfer local context to remote  Define variables and functions containing the state that will be transferred to the remote  Define a function that will be executed on the remote side  Then inside a here document read by bash -s you can use declare -p to transfer the variable values and use declare -f to transfer function definitions to the remote  Because declare takes care of the quoting and will be parsed by the remote bash  the variables are properly quoted and functions are properly transferred  You may just write the script locally  usually I do one long function with the work I need to do on the remote side  The context has to be hand-picked  but the following method is  quot good enough quot  for any short scripts and is safe - should properly handle all corner cases  somevar  quot spaces or other special characters quot  somevar2  quot        quot  another func         mkdir -p  quot  1 quot    work         another func  quot  somevar quot      touch  quot  somevar quot   quot  somevar2 quot    ssh user server  bash -s   lt  lt EOT   declare -p somevar somevar2       transfer variables values   declare -f work another func      transfer function definitions work                                call the function EOT

User · Answer

If it s one script it s fine with the above solution  I would set up Ansible to do the Job  It works in the same way  Ansible uses ssh to execute the scripts on the remote machine for both Unix or Windows   It will be more structured and maintainable

User · Answer

First  copy the script over to Machine B using scp      user machineA   scp  path to script user machineB  home user path   Then  just run the script      user machineA   ssh user machineB   home user path script    This will work if you have given executable permission to the script

User · Answer

This is an old question  and Jason s answer works fine  but I would like to add this   ssh user host  lt  lt  ENDSSH   commands to run on remote host ENDSSH   This can also be used with su and commands which require user input   note the   escaped heredoc   Edit  Since this answer keeps getting bits of traffic  i would add even more info to this wonderful use of heredoc   You can nest commands with this syntax  and thats the only way nesting seems to work  in a sane way   ssh user host  lt  lt  ENDSSH   commands to run on remote host ssh user host2  lt  lt  END2    Another bunch of commands on another host wall  lt  lt  ENDWALL  Error  Out of cheese ENDWALL ftp ftp secureftp-test com  lt  lt  ENDFTP  test test ls ENDFTP END2 ENDSSH   You can actually have a conversation with some services like telnet  ftp  etc  But remember that heredoc just sends the stdin as text  it doesn t wait for response between lines  Edit  I just found out that you can indent the insides with tabs if you use  lt  lt -END    ssh user host  lt  lt - ENDSSH       commands to run on remote host     ssh user host2  lt  lt - END2            Another bunch of commands on another host         wall  lt  lt - ENDWALL              Error  Out of cheese         ENDWALL         ftp ftp secureftp-test com  lt  lt - ENDFTP              test             test             ls         ENDFTP     END2 ENDSSH    I think this should work   Also see http   tldp org LDP abs html here-docs html

User · Answer

if you wanna execute command like this  temp  ls -a  echo  temp  command in    will cause errors   below command will solve this problem  ssh user host     temp  ls -a  echo  temp

[shell] How to use SSH to run a local shell script on a remote machine?

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