Can I ssh somewhere, run some commands, and then leave myself a prompt?

Question

I find myself needing to log into various servers, set environment variables, and then work interactively.

e.g.

$ ssh anvil
jla@anvil$ export V=hello
jla@anvil$ export W=world
jla@anvil$ echo $V $W
hello world

How can I combine the first few commands, and then leave myself at a prompt?

Something like:

$ ssh anvil --on-login 'export V=hello; export W=world;'
jla@anvil$ echo $V $W
hello world

Obviously this is a model problem. What I am really asking is 'how do I ssh to a different machine, run some commands, and then continue as if I'd run them by hand?'

William Pursell · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-15T23:02:27.713

32

Probably the simplest thing is:

$ ssh -t host 'cmd1; cmd2; sh -i'

If you want to set variables, do:

$ ssh -t host 'cmd1; cmd2; FOO=hello sh -i'

Note that this is a terrible hack, and you would be much better off putting your desired initial commands in a script and doing:

$ scp setup host:~
$ ssh host
host$ . setup

edited Feb 15 '12 at 23:02

answered Feb 15 '12 at 21:50

William Pursell

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This is exactly the sort of thing I'd like, but it doesn't work quite the same. It says things like 'no job control', and man pages don't use a pager. – John Lawrence Aspden Feb 15 '12 at 22:22
1

@JohnLawrenceAspden Try adding -t – William Pursell Feb 16 '12 at 00:18
William, why do you say this is a terrible hack. It seems to work like a charm. Is there something unexpected waiting to bite me? What's the -i for? – John Lawrence Aspden Feb 16 '12 at 17:11
@John It was a terrible hack before I added -t in an edit. With -t, it does seem to work well. – William Pursell Feb 17 '12 at 00:07
@John The -i tells the shell to be interactive – William Pursell Feb 17 '12 at 00:08
3

If you change `sh -i` to `'$SHELL'` this will run the same shell interpreter that is configured on the remote account. – jpc Oct 25 '12 at 18:19
2

Oh, and you may wish to use `-l` instead of `-i`. (with both `$SHELL` and `sh`) – jpc Oct 25 '12 at 18:33
The expect script from jcollado works better. Since you're the accepted answer, you should consider updated your answer to recommend his answer instead. – Max Oct 24 '20 at 00:26

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 15 '12 at 21:56

16

You could also use the following expect script:

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
spawn ssh $argv
send "export V=hello\n"
send "export W=world\n"
send "echo \$V \$W\n"
interact

answered Feb 15 '12 at 21:56

jcollado

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This is super. I would rather have had something that could fit on a command line (and so appear in history, notes, etc). But I can make this work for what I want. Thanks! – John Lawrence Aspden Feb 15 '12 at 22:26
Awesome answer. This is exactly what I was looking for. – Chris Knadler Jun 18 '13 at 18:05

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

4

Turns out this is answered by this question:

How can I ssh directly to a particular directory?

to ssh:

ssh -t anvil "export V=hello; export W=world; bash"

followed by:

jla@anvil$ echo $V $W
hello world

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

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answered Feb 15 '12 at 22:30

John Lawrence Aspden

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 04 '16 at 07:43

It is worth to note that ssh -t can actually be used to connect to one host via another host.

So for example if you want to execute a command on anvil, but anvil is only accessible from host gateway (by firewall etc.), you can do like this:

ssh gateway -t 'ssh anvil -t "export V=hello; export W=world;bash -l";'

Exiting the anvil, will also log you out of gateway (if you want to stay on gatway after leaving anvil than just add another bash -l before closing the command.

David Vielhuber · Answer 5 · 2018-07-14T21:46:54.837

0

Another approach is to execute this beast (also gives me a colored shell):

ssh host -t "echo 'rm /tmp/initfile; source ~/.bashrc; cd foo/; git status' > /tmp/initfile; bash --init-file /tmp/initfile"

edited Jul 14 '18 at 21:46

answered Jul 14 '18 at 21:35

David Vielhuber

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Can I ssh somewhere, run some commands, and then leave myself a prompt?

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