Passing a bash command to a remote host using ssh

Question

Doing a migration my bit of code is

cat /etc/fstab |grep nfs >/root/mounts.txt
cat /etc/fstab |grep cifs >> /root/mounts.txt
rsync -av /root/mounts.txt                              ${REMOTEHOST}:/root/
ssh root@${REMOTEHOST} 'cat /root/mounts.txt >> /etc/fstab'
ssh root@${REMOTEHOST} 'for i in $(cat /root/mounts.txt |awk '{print $2}');do mkdir -p $i; done'

Problem is that the last line works locally:

 for i in $(cat /root/mounts.txt |awk '{print $2}');do mkdir -p $i; done

However when I am passing it to the remote host I am getting:

" {print

awk: cmd. line:1: ^ unexpected newline or end of string"

Any suggestions to fix it?

Your "inner" single quotes are not "inner" at all. They are ending (and restarting) the outer single quoted string. You need to escape them. Replace them with '\'' (single-quote backslash single-quote single-quote). — Etan Reisner
– Etan Reisner, Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 17:15

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-26 17:20:21Z

2

This is because the command provided in the ssh gets stopped when writing the first quote of the awk expression.

So you may want to use another approach:

ssh root@${REMOTEHOST} 'while read -r _ host _; do mkdir -p $host; done < /root/mounts.txt'

This uses a while read variable1 variable2 variable3 so that you don't need to use awk to get the second value.

edited Apr 26, 2015 at 17:20

anubhava

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answered Apr 26, 2015 at 17:16

fedorqui

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1 Comment

anubhava Over a year ago

Yes that's better approach +1

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