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I am trying to get the latest folder inside my directory in machineB and machineC. So I came up with the below command which will find me the latest folder inside -

`/bat/data/snapshot`

And that latest folder will be in the form of YYYYMMDD. Below is my shell script -

#!/bin/bash

readonly FILERS_LOCATION=(machineB machineC)
readonly MAPPED_LOCATION=/bat/data/snapshot

dir1=$(ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" david@${FILERS_LOCATION[0]} ls -dt1 "$MAPPED_LOCATION"/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] | head -n1)
dir2=$(ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" david@${FILERS_LOCATION[1]} ls -dt1 "$MAPPED_LOCATION"/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] | head -n1)

echo $dir1
echo $dir2

Now dir1 will look like in machineB as -

/bat/data/snapshot/20131222

And dir2 will look like in machineC as -

/bat/data/snapshot/20131222

Now I need to cd into these two directory and do a word count of files and store them in length1 and length2 variable -

ls | wc -l

I thought I can do this but I thought before that I need to cd into those two directory and then do a word count -

echo $dir1
echo $dir2

length1=$(ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" david@${FILERS_LOCATION[0]} ls | wc -l "$dir1")
length2=$(ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" david@${FILERS_LOCATION[1]} ls | wc -l "$dir2")

echo $length1
echo $length2   

So now I am not sure how to do cd into those two directory and then do a ls and find the count of files as part of that shell script?

2 Answers 2

3

Your best bet is going to be to write a script rather than trying to pass a big ugly command via ssh arguments. It becomes very difficult to execute complex commands via ssh arguments because ssh joins all the arguments into a space separated string, and then re-splits them on the remote end.

Now, using a script isn't as bad as it sounds, and is actually quite simple since you can pass the script over STDIN.

function host_file_count() {
 ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no david@"$1" bash -s <<'EOI'
  dir_last="$(ls -dt1 /bat/data/snapshot/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] | head -n 1)"
  count="$(ls -1 "$dir_last"/ | wc -l)"
  echo "$(hostname): $dir_last=$count"
EOI
}
host_file_count machineB
host_file_count machineC

Basically this just feeds the script into the STDIN of ssh which in turn passes to STDIN of bash -s on the remote host.
The other advantage of doing it this way is that you don't have to perform multiple ssh commands to get the result.


Note that many will tell you not to parse ls. So below is another script which does the same but without using ls.

function host_file_count() {
 ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no david@"$1" bash -s <<'EOI'
  dirs=( /bat/data/snapshot/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] ) # get a list of matching directories
  dir_last="${dirs[${#dirs[@]} - 1]}" # get the last item in the list
  files=( "$dir_last"/* ) # get the list of files in directory
  count="${#files[@]}" # size of that list
  echo "$(hostname): $dir_last=$count"
EOI
}
host_file_count machineB
host_file_count machineC

note: both of these are completely untested, there may be minor errors, but the principle stands

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  • Thanks for suggestion.. I am little bit rusty in bash scripting.. How do I am supposed to call host_file_count() method in my shell script keeping in mind as I have few constants declared.
    – arsenal
    Dec 24, 2013 at 8:04
  • It's there at the bottom. host_file_count machineB host_file_count machineC.
    – phemmer
    Dec 24, 2013 at 8:08
0

Your local shell in interpreting the pipe, plus you've got the variable on the wrong command:

len1=$( ssh ... user@host sh -c "ls '$dir1' | wc -l" )
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  • still it doesn't work and I am getting length as 0 always..
    – arsenal
    Dec 24, 2013 at 7:53
  • It works fine if I remove sh -c and keep everything as it is.. Any idea why?
    – arsenal
    Dec 24, 2013 at 8:01
  • @TechGeeky the sh -c is implied. ssh on the remote host basically passes all the arguments through a sh -c, so specifying it is unnecessary. With it as is, you get into lots of issues with ssh and wordsplitting (it's a complex ugly mess).
    – phemmer
    Dec 24, 2013 at 8:05

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