Running a script file over ssh through sudo

Question

I can log in to a remote machine as a user who can do sudo su -. I can't login as root.

I have a script locally that I want to run at the remote machine. Also, the script is sent there trough another script.

I can't figure out how. I've red quite a few Q&A's here but no success. The closest I have:

COMMAND_SSH="sudo -i <<\'EOF\'"`cat ./unifyServiceNode.sh`"\\nEOF\\n" ;;
...
while read HOST; do
  echo -e "\n\n======== $USER_@$HOST <-- $COMMAND_SSH =================\n\n";
  ssh -n -tt centos@$HOST "'$COMMAND_SSH'";
done < hosts.txt

This ends up with this output:

======== [email protected] <-- sudo -i <<\'EOF\'
##
##  Creates a few links and scripts to unify the nodes maintainance.
##

  BB="/bb"
  NAME="bpds-api"
  NAME2="bpds-"

  mkdir -p $BB
  ln -s /opt/$NAME/logs/*.log $BB/log
  ln -s /opt/$NAME/conf/api/$NAME.yml $BB/conf.yml || ln -s /opt/$NAME/conf/api/$NAME2.yml $BB/conf.yml
  echo "systemctl \${1:-restart} "${@:2}" $NAME" > $BB/Sys
  echo "tail -\${1:-500f} $BB/log" > $BB/Tail
  echo "nano $BB/conf.yml" > $BB/Conf
  chmod a+x $BB/Sys $BB/Tail $BB/Conf
  echo "export PATH=\$PATH:$BB" >> ~/.bashrc
EOF
 =====================================


bash: sudo -i <<\EOF': command not found
bash: line 14: /bb/Sys: Permission denied
bash: line 15: /bb/Tail: Permission denied
bash: line 16: /bb/Conf: Permission denied
chmod: changing permissions of ‘/bb/Sys’: Operation not permitted
chmod: changing permissions of ‘/bb/Tail’: Operation not permitted
chmod: changing permissions of ‘/bb/Conf’: Operation not permitted
bash: -c: line 18: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
bash: -c: line 19: syntax error: unexpected end of file
Connection to somehost.com closed.

This is the "closest" because it sees the individual commands but is not under sudo, because the first line's <<EOF isn't (un)escaped properly.

**How should I execute an arbitrary script under sudo over ssh?"

Answer 1

I have figured out soon after posting.

COMMAND_SSH="sudo -i <<'EOF'"`cat ./unifyServiceNode.sh``echo -e '\nEOF'` ;;

ssh -n -tt centos@$HOST "$COMMAND_SSH"; ## -n prevents reading the input. -tt forces TTY.

The extra 's around the SSH command were the issue it seems, and I also needed to make the newline through echo.

I am not quite sure if that's just a lucky hack or the right way to do it, though. To be honest, I am completely lost in Bash's quotes evaluation :)

Answer 2

Your current method is very convoluted, which is what's making it difficult to work with.
This can instead be simplified to:

ssh -i $AWS_KEY centos@$HOST sudo sh < ./unifyServiceNode.sh

Answer 3

Put the commands that you need to execute in a script, transfer that script over to the host using scp and run it through ssh.

Or, feed the here-document to the appropriate shell:

ssh server sh <<'END_SCRIPT'
script code
goes here
END_SCRIPT

Or, use Ansible or similar system which is made for remote configuration of multiple hosts.

You generally do not want to put commands in variables.

Answer 4

If you're willing to store plain text passwords (obviously a bad idea), you can combine sshpass -p "my_ssh_password", ssh << HEREDOC and echo "my_sudo_password" | sudo -S my_cmd to do it.

Example:

sshpass -p "my_ssh_password" ssh my_user@my_ip << 'ENDSSH'
echo "my_sudo_password" | sudo -S my_sudo_command1
echo "my_sudo_password" | sudo -S my_sudo_command2
echo "my_sudo_password" | sudo -S my_sudo_script
ENDSSH