Checking SSH failure in a script - bash

Question

Hi what is the best way to check to see if SSH fails for whatever reason?
Can I use a IF statement ( if it fails then do something)
I'm using the ssh command in a loop and passing my hosts names form a flat file.
so I do something like:
for i in `cat /tmp/hosts` ; do ssh $i 'hostname;sudo ethtool eth1'; done
I get sometime this error or I just cannot connect
ssh: host1 Temporary failure in name resolution
I want to skip the hosts that I cannot connect to is SSH fails. What is the best way to do this? Is there a runtime error I can trap to bypass the hosts that I cannot ssh into for whatever reason, perhaps ssh is not allowed or I do not have the right password ?
Thanking you in advance
Cheers

Answer 1

To check if there was a problem connecting and/or running the remote command:
if ! ssh host command
then
echo "SSH connection or remote command failed"
fi
To check if there was a problem connecting, regardless of success of the remote command (unless it happens to return status 255, which is rare):
if ssh host command; [ $? -eq 255 ]
then
echo "SSH connection failed"
fi
Applied to your example, this would be:
for i in `cat /tmp/hosts` ;
do
if ! ssh $i 'hostname;sudo ethtool eth1';
then
echo "Connection or remote command on $i failed";
fi
done

Answer 2

You can check the return value that ssh gives you as originally shown here:
How to create a bash script to check the SSH connection?
$ ssh -q user#downhost exit
$ echo $?
255
$ ssh -q user#uphost exit
$ echo $?
0
EDIT - I cheated and used nc
Something like this:
#!/bin/bash
ssh_port_is_open() { nc -z ${1:?hostname} 22 > /dev/null; }
for host in `cat /tmp/hosts` ; do
if ssh_port_is_open $host; then
ssh -o "BatchMode=yes" $i 'hostname; sudo ethtool eth1';
else
echo " $i Down"
fi
done