[clug-talk] running a remote process

[Mark Carlson]

On 4/8/09, Mark Carlson <carlsonmark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/8/09, Greg Saunders <greg at taord.com> wrote:
>  > Hi all, I'm looking for the best way to run a remote process. SSH with keys?
>  > "ssh user at host.domain.com remoteprocess"
>  >
>  > Is there a better way, especially if you have to execute 20 remote commands
>  > each time and those commands are determined on the fly and not known ahead
>  > of time.
>  >
>  > Thanks!
>  > Greg
>
>
> "best" really depends on your situation...
>
>  Personally, I find SSH to be the best for me.  If you need to use
>  keys, use them, if you don't want to, don't.
>
>  If you want to execute 20 commands, use a list of commands.
>
>  Some simple examples:
>  # Commands are executed sequentially:
>  % command1; cmd2; cmd3
>  # Commands are only executed if the previous one returns zero:
>  % command1 && cmd2 && cmd3
>  # Commands are only executed if the previous one returned nonzero (error):
>  % command1 || cmd2 || cmd3
>
>  A more complex example:
>  # Run command 1, then command 2, and finally command 3 only if command
>  2 did not return an error
>  % command1; cmd2 && cmd3
>
>
>  From the bash man page: http://linux.die.net/man/1/bash
>  ----------------------------------------
>  Shell Grammar
>  <...>
>
>  Lists
>
>  A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the
>  operators ;, &, &&, or ||, and optionally terminated by one of ;, &,
>  or <newline>.
>
>  Of these list operators, && and || have equal precedence, followed by
>  ; and &, which have equal precedence.
>
>  A sequence of one or more newlines may appear in a list instead of a
>  semicolon to delimit commands.
>
>  If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell
>  executes the command in the background in a subshell. The shell does
>  not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0.
>  Commands separated by a ; are executed sequentially; the shell waits
>  for each command to terminate in turn. The return status is the exit
>  status of the last command executed.
>
>  The control operators && and || denote AND lists and OR lists,
>  respectively. An AND list has the form
>     command1 && command2
>  command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero.
>
>  An OR list has the form
>     command1 || command2
>  command2 is executed if and only if command1 returns a non-zero exit
>  status. The return status of AND and OR lists is the exit status of
>  the last command executed in the list.
>
>  -Mark C.
>

Oh, and if you don't use quotes to enclose the commands, you may be
surprised by the results!

Ex: both commands run on remote machine:
% ssh 127.0.0.1 "echo hello; echo world"

Ex: "echo hello" run remotely, "echo world" run locally
% ssh 127.0.0.1 echo hello; echo world

The results look the same in this case... but if your commands are
backing up a computer or something, you will soon notice a difference!

-Mark C.