Checking the exit status of a ssh remote command in bash

Question

I need to check that a transacions file is published on a remote host. There is no transactions code published for today the 31 of December. I know that for certain. There is one for yesterday. However no matter which date I use, the 30 or the 31, the return code is the same.

What I am looking to check is the return status of ssh which I thought should be return status of the remotely executed command I thought that the 'if statement' would exit with a 0 if the 'ls -ltr' worked and something greater than zero, or false if the 'ls -ltr' did not work. I would think that the 'if' statement would look at the return status of the shh, which should be the return status of the remotely executed command - or the 'ls -ltr'

How do i get thie to work?

this is for the 30 - which is on the remote host, and is successful

casper@host:/scripts$ ssh -q -T user@capserbox "ls -ltr  /home/DropBox/transactions_20141230.csv"
-rw-r--r--   1 rr_prd    2233047 Dec 31 07:26 /home/DropBox/transactions_20141230.csv

and this is for the 31 which there is no report yet for the 31, so it is unsuccessful

casper@host:/scripts$ ssh -q -T user@capserbox "ls -ltr  /home/DropBox/transactions_20141231.csv"
/home/DropBox/transactions_20141231.csv not found
casper@host:/scripts$

I flip the date with the comment out hashtag

casper@host:/scripts$ ssh -q -T user@capserbox "ls -ltr  /home/DropBox/transactions_20141231.csv"
/home/DropBox/transactions_20141231.csv not found
casper@host:/scripts$



#!/bin/bash
today=$(/bin/date +%Y%m%d)
#today="20141230"
echo $today
if ssh -q -T user@capserbox "ls -ltr  /home/DropBox/transactions_$today.csv" > /dev/null 2>&1 ;
    then
       echo "this worked"
    else
       echo "this did not work"
fi

However - when i use the script for both dates - it is successful, when for the 31, it really should return "this did not work"

casper@host:/scripts$
casper@host:/scripts$ vim offshore_check
casper@host:/scripts$ ./offshore_check
20141230
this worked
casper@host:/scripts$ vim offshore_check
casper@host:/scripts$ ./offshore_check
20141231
this worked
casper@host:/scripts$
casper@host:/scripts$

Cyrus · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-31 18:35:12Z

2

file="/home/DropBox/transactions_20141231.csv"
ssh -q -T user@capserbox "test -e $file"
ret="$?"
case $ret in
  0)
    echo "$file exists"
    ;;
  1)
    echo "$file does not exist"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "other problem"
    ;;
esac

edited Dec 31, 2014 at 18:35

answered Dec 31, 2014 at 18:02

Cyrus

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Comments

Kenster · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-31 19:03:39Z

0

The "if" construct that you're using should work, and it does work for me:

$ if ssh -q -T localhost "ls -ltr /does/not/exist"; then echo succeeded; else echo failed; fi
Password:
ls: /does/not/exist: No such file or directory
failed

I notice that the error printed by your ls program is worded differently than the error that I got (and I tried two different systems). "file not found" in your case, "ls: file: No such file or directory" in mine. My suspicion is that the ls command which you're invoking here isn't the typical modern Unix command. You may be running a nonstandard version, a non-Unix version, or something very old, and it may not actually be exiting with a non-zero exit code for this particular error.

answered Dec 31, 2014 at 19:03

Kenster

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1 Comment

capser Over a year ago

it is an older offshore machine - - SunOS 5.8 Generic_117350-35 - build-version 020

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:33:40Z

0

Similar issues have been discussed here many times, see scp return code discussion 1

and 300+ answers when searching for scp errors

but to give you a working answer, consider trying this

 if 
     ssh -q -T user@capserbox "ls -ltr  /home/DropBox/transactions_${today}.csv" \
     | grep -q "transactions_${today}\.csv" ;
 then
       echo "this worked" 
 else
       echo "nope"
 fi

Sorry, I don't have any way to test this.

IHTH.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:33

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 31, 2014 at 17:54

shellter

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