What is the cleanest way to ssh and run multiple commands in Bash?

Question

I already have an ssh agent set up, and I can run commands on an external server in Bash script doing stuff like:

ssh blah_server "ls; pwd;"
         


        

Answer 1

The posted answers using multiline strings and multiple bash scripts did not work for me.

• Long multiline strings are hard to maintain.
• Separate bash scripts do not maintain local variables.

Here is a functional way to ssh and run multiple commands while keeping local context.

LOCAL_VARIABLE=test

run_remote() {
    echo "$LOCAL_VARIABLE"
    ls some_folder; 
    ./someaction.sh 'some params'
    ./some_other_action 'other params'
}

ssh otherhost "$(set); run_remote"

Answer 2

Put all the commands on to a script and it can be run like

ssh <remote-user>@<remote-host> "bash -s" <./remote-commands.sh

Answer 3

This works well for creating scripts, as you do not have to include other files:

#!/bin/bash
ssh <my_user>@<my_host> "bash -s" << EOF
    # here you just type all your commmands, as you can see, i.e.
    touch /tmp/test1;
    touch /tmp/test2;
    touch /tmp/test3;
EOF

# you can use '$(which bash) -s' instead of my "bash -s" as well
# but bash is usually being found in a standard location
# so for easier memorizing it i leave that out
# since i dont fat-finger my $PATH that bad so it cant even find /bin/bash ..

Answer 4

Edit your script locally, then pipe it into ssh, e.g.

cat commands-to-execute-remotely.sh | ssh blah_server

where commands-to-execute-remotely.sh looks like your list above:

ls some_folder
./someaction.sh
pwd;

Answer 5

I see two ways:

First you make a control socket like this:

 ssh -oControlMaster=yes -oControlPath=~/.ssh/ssh-%r-%h-%p <yourip>

and run your commands

 ssh -oControlMaster=no -oControlPath=~/.ssh/ssh-%r-%h-%p <yourip> -t <yourcommand>

This way you can write an ssh command without actually reconnecting to the server.

The second would be to dynamically generate the script, scping it and running.

Answer 6

To match your sample code, you can wrap your commands inside single or double qoutes. For example

ssh blah_server "
  ls
  pwd
"