This is quite a common task for Linux system administrators, when it is needed to execute some command or a local Bash script from a one Linux workstation or a server on another remote Linux machine over SSH.
In this article you will find the examples of how to execute a remote command, multiple commands or a Bash script over SSH between remote Linux hosts and get back the output (result).
This information will be especially useful for ones, who want to create a Bash script that will be hosted locally on a one Linux machine but would be executed remotely on the other hosts over SSH.
Cool Tip: Connect to a remote SSH server without typing a password! Configure a passwordless authentication! Only 3 easy steps! Read more →
SSH: Execute Remote Command
Execute a remote command on a host over SSH:
$ ssh USER@HOST 'COMMAND'
Examples
Get the uptime of the remote server:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 'uptime'
Reboot the remote server:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 'reboot'
SSH: Run Multiple Remote Commands
In the most cases it is not enough to send only one remote command over SSH.
Much more often it is required to send multiple commands on a remote server, for example, to collect some data for inventory and get back the result.
There are a lot of different ways of how it can be done, but i will show the most popular of them.
Run multiple command on a remote host over SSH:
$ ssh USER@HOST 'COMMAND1; COMMAND2; COMMAND3'
– or –
$ ssh USER@HOST 'COMMAND1 | COMMAND2 | COMMAND3'
– or –
$ ssh USER@HOST << EOF COMMAND1 COMMAND2 COMMAND3 EOF
Cool Tip: SSH login is too slow? This can be fixed easily! Get rid of delay during authentication! Read more →
Examples
Get the uptime and the disk usage:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 'uptime; df -h'
Get the memory usage and the load average:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 'free -m | cat /proc/loadavg'
Show the kernel version, number of CPUs and the total RAM:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 << EOF uname -a lscpu | grep "^CPU(s)" grep -i memtotal /proc/meminfo EOF
SSH: Run Bash Script on Remote Server
The equally common situation, when there is some Bash script on a Linux machine and it needs to connect from it over SSH to another Linux machine and run this script there.
The idea is to connect to a remote Linux server over SSH, let the script do the required operations and return back to local, without need not to upload this script to a remote server.
Certainly this can be done and moreover quite easily.
$ ssh USER@HOST 'bash -s' < SCRIPT
Cool Tip: Want to ROCK? Start a GUI (graphical) application on a remote Linux workstation over SSH! Read more →
Example
Execute the local script.sh on the remote server:
$ ssh root@192.168.1.1 'bash -s' < script.sh
Nice Post there..I was wondering what if want to execute the script with an argument.
Try this:
as explained here:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/87405/how-can-i-execute-local-script-on-remote-machine-and-include-arguments
Hi,
How about executing a command remotely and making sure that it will be killed once i kill my ssh session. or getting of PID of either SSH or the actual command on remote-node via a script.
Something like this I want to achieve:
Example: collecting pcap on remote addr and storing it locally.
I was unable to get the proper Pids in this case. Any reply would be helpful.
– Thanks.
How to check remote server services which require sudo privilege?
How to check remote server services which require sudo privilege from local script file?
is what I use to send a bash script over the wire with sudo priviliges
How do create a scrip to run commands on multiple remote machines?
When the first one gets executed, the response returned to STOUT, and the next one is not executed until I ^C the previous command.
I tried using ‘exit’ command and ‘&’ , neither is working.
useless writing! Where it’s remote script executing example about sudo use?
Hello everyone,
I am new to linux and trying to learn it. I have task to complete “Get last 3 login details of list of linux machine with date and time.”
Is there any way to achive it?
Thanks in advance
Thank you mate!
Command $backdoor
$bash -0 $(wich bash)
Whoami..
#root
You should change these examples to use double quotes – I got tripped up putting variables in these single quotes and took me a while to realise bash treats it as a string…
como puedo hacer que solo me pida una vez la contraseña de mi servidor? hice mi escript y como realizo varias tareas me pide varias veces la contraseña
usa ssh-copy-id para copiar la llave
ssh root@192.168.0.10 <<Filler
feh -F ~/image.jpg &
exit
Filler
did not help me.. still in ssh connection =(
This was very helpful !
Thanks 🙂
Can someone help me write a shell script to shutdown a Ubuntu computer?
I’m going to have it run on a Mac, so that it will ssh into the Ubuntu and shut it down. I need it to open Application “Terminal” then ssh name@123.45.67.89, then give it the password.
Then I need it to issue command “sudo poweroff”, and give it the password again.
I know how to do this manually by opening Mac’s Terminal. I just type in “ssh name@123.456.78.9, it asks for the password, I type it in, and it’s connected. Then I just type in “sudo poweroff” and it asks for the password again, I type it in, and bam, it shuts down the Ubunt computer.
The problem is, I need to automate this to do it at a specific time of day. On the Mac, there is what is called “Automator”, and you can set up ICalendar Events to run an “Automator Workflow” with a Shell Script. I just don’t know how to write the Shell Script to do what I can do manually? Any help is appreciated greatly!
I solved this. Here’s what works:
tell application “Terminal”
activate
do script (“ssh test@192.168.1.10“)
delay 6
do script “password” in front window
delay 7
do script “sudo poweroff” in front window
delay 5
do script “password” in front window
end tell
Why when I get a script from somewhere by curl & then pipe to bash to run it on my local server, some commands in a bash functions failed to execute, no error, no code error btw..just the called functions don’t execute.. How do I know my code is ok, because when I output it as a file from curl, I chmod and run it like ./..scriptfile.sh.. Code run fine.. Any idea and how do I resolve this?
This was very helpful for me. I am very new to this and just ordered a VPS yesterday and these guides are really helping me work my way around. I appreciate this simple resource you’ve put together!
how to run a script with sudo previllages on remote server:
ssh -tt rundeck@$Batch_Host ‘ bash -s’ < /home/abhishekc/dem.sh
i am getting permission denied
hi is it possible to use the variable inside EOF, like below