script for accessing remote server, get error log and rename it automatically. - shell

Question

Hi, my name is Evan, newbie on UNIX :)
i want to ask about scripting on unix. here is the case :
i have 4 unix server (with freeBSD OS), let call them "Gorrila's"
And one gateway server (also, with unix FreeBSD OS), Let call this one "Monkey's"
if i want access and login to Gorillas server, i have to using putty to access Monkey and then, from monkey doing ssh connection to enter Gorillas server.
The case is, my boss asking to me, to get an apache error log, everday, in fourth of gorrila's server.
All this time, i am doing manually. putty to monkeys - ssh to gorrilas - copy error log into monkey server using scp command and then, get error log with winscp from monkeys server.
the problem is :
how to make script with this case ?
how to rename automatically the error_log because, error log name in every server has a same name. which is "01_error.log". i had to rename it manually so they can't replace each other.
i hope, somebody can help me with this.
All, Thank you for your help and time. and sorry for the bad english language. :)

Answer 1

The easiest way to accomplish this would be to setup an automated job on Gorilla4.
Your first problem, is that you'll need to setup password-less SSH access between Gorilla4 and Monkey so you don't need a person to physically type in the password.
While you can do this with the 'root' user I would STRONGLY recommend against it.
Instead create a maintenance user on BOTH hosts:
$ useradd -m maintuser
Then switch to the new user and create SSH key on Gorilla4:
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
Accept the defaults when prompted. Then copy the id_rsa.pub file to the ~/.ssh directory of the maintuser on Monkey.
Now, when you are the "maintuser" on Gorilla4, you can SSH to Monkey without a password.
Then you can create a script called "copy_log.sh":
#!/bin/bash
# copy_log.sh
log_path="/path/to/logdir"
log_name="01_error.log"
target_host="monkey"
echo "copying ${log_name} to ${target_host}..."
# note: $(hostname) below will add "Gorilla4" to the name of the file
scp ${log_path}/${log_name} maintuser#${target_host}:/path/to/dest/$(hostname)_${log_name} || {
echo "Failed to scp file"
exit 2
}
echo "completed successfully"
Make it executable:
$ chmod +x copy_log.sh
Add it to the maintuser's crontab on Gorilla4 to run at whatever time you would nomrally do it yourself, say 8am everyday:
00 08 * * * /path/to/copy_log.sh >> /some/log/dir/copy_log.out 2>&1
Hope this helps; if nothing else, it will give you plenty to Google :)