So I have a problem similar to how to send ssh job to background.
I have a windows c# program automated to execute tcpdump on a remote linux os using http://sshnet.codeplex.com/. I'm trying to execute tcpdump on the remote linux and leave it running after I disconnect.
I've been doing a lot of debugging using plink, but cannot seem to achieve the desired result. I've tried:
plink root#10.5.1.1 bash -c "tcpdump -i eth0 -w test.cap"
but it holds the sshclient until I ctrl+C (not going to work for automated solution). I've also tried variations of:
plink root#10.5.1.1 bash -c "tcpdump -i eth0 -w test.cap &"
but either the command is not executed at all (test.cap does not exist) or is terminated immediately (test.cap contains 1 line). During testing, I've left a ping going, so the capture should have somthing...
The previously mentioned link solves the problem with screen, but the remote linux os is not configurable and does not have screen. Any suggestions are welcome.
In the latter case, your tcpdump process is probably being aborted when you disconnect. Try:
plink root#10.5.1.1 bash -c "nohup tcpdump -i eth0 -w test.cap &"
See the manpage for nohup. You may also want to consider redirecting stdout and stderr to a file or /dev/null to prevent nohup from writing output to a file:
plink root#10.5.1.1 bash -c "nohup tcpdump -i eth0 -w test.cap >/dev/null 2>&1 &"
I had a similar problem while starting a remote application. This pattern worked for me on Debian servers:
ssh root#server "nohup /usr/local/bin/app -c cfg &; exit"
addition: for another test the above didn't work, ie. the command didn't start on the remote server. Adding a command that returns successfully before the exit seems to work.
ssh root#server "nohup /usr/local/bin/otherapp &; w; exit"
I had a similar situation:
(on windows machine) i wanted to create a ms batch script to open an SSH connection to a raspberry pi and execute a local script in the background.
I found that combining both Raj's and fahd's answers did the trick for me:
my ms batch script:
plink -load "raspberry Pi" -t -m startCommand.txt
the content of startCommand.txt is as follows:
nohup /home/pi/myscript >/dev/null 2>&1 &
w
exit
The ">/dev/null 2>&1 " is important!
I found out (the hard way) that the RPi's SDcard kept getting full by an extremely large nohup.out file (and with a full SDcard, the RPi couldn't even login properly)
reasoning:
I used the -load to load a saved session in PuTTY (i do this because i am authenticating with public/private keys instead of passwords, but this should be the same as simply typing in the host)
then -t (as recommended by Raj)
then -m to load a list of commands in that file
without the parameter "-t" and without the "w" and "exit", my batch script would just run, not execute 'myscript' and close again.
I had the same issue. I had a scrip in which I had nohup tcpdump .... & . I could not use ssh to run it as it dies when the ssh finished. The solution I came up with was super simple. I just added sleep 5 to the end of my script and it works just fine. It seems tcpdump needs some seconds to go to background safely before you exit even with nohup.
I had the same problem, and I found that the "-t" option seems to be important to nohup. I found the nohup wasn't taking affect without the "-t" option.
ssh -t user#remote 'nohup tcpdump -i any -w /tmp/somefile &>/dev/null & sleep 2'
I think that I've nailed it, at least in IBM AIX
I'm using
ssh -tq user#host "/path/start-tcpdump.ksh"
(authentication is done by publick key).
I was having inconsistent results using simple "nohup tcpdump .... &", sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not, sometimes it even blocked and I had to disconnect the session.
So far, this is working ok, I can't really say WHY it is working, but it is...
This is my start-tcpip.ksh
#!/usr/bin/ksh
HOST=$(uname -n)
FILTER="port not 22"
(tcpdump -i en1 -w $HOST-en1.cap $FILTER >/dev/null 2>&1 ) &
sleep 2
(tcpdump -i en2 -w $HOST-en2.cap $FILTER >/dev/null 2>&1 ) &
sleep 2
exit 0
Related
I want to start a process using nohup on a remote machine via ssh. The problem is how to get the PID of the process started with nohup, so the "process actually doing something", not some outer shell instance or the like. Also, I want to store stdout and stderr in files, but that is not the issue here...
Locally, it works flawlessly using
nohup sleep 30 > out 2> err < /dev/null & echo $!
It is echoing me the exact PID of the command "sleep 30", which I can also see using "top" or "ps aux|grep sleep".
But I'm having trouble doing it remotely via ssh. I tried something like
ssh remote_machine 'nohup bash -c "( ( sleep 30 ) & )" > out 2> err < /dev/null'
but I cannot figure out where to place the "echo $!" so that it is displayed in my local shell. It is always showing me wrong PIDs, for example the one of the "bash" instance etc.
Has somebody an idea how to solve this?
EDIT:
OK, the "bash -c" might not be needed here. Like Lotharyx pointed out, I get the right PID just fine using
ssh remote 'nohup sleep 30 > out 2> err < /dev/null & echo $!'
but then the problem is that if you substitute "sleep 30" with something that produces output, say, "echo Hello World!", that output does not end up in the file "out", neither on the local nor on remote side. Anybody got an idea why?
EDIT2: My fault! There was just no space left on the other device, that's why the files "out" and "err" stayed empty!
So this is working. In addition, if one wants to call multiple commands in a row, separated by a semicolon (;), one can still use "bash -c", like so:
ssh remote 'nohup bash -c "echo bla;sleep 30;echo blupp" > out 2> err < /dev/null & echo $!'
Then it prints out the PID of the "bash -c" on the local side, which is just fine. (It is impossible to get the PID of the "innermost" or "busy" process, because every program itself can spawn new subprocesses, there is no way to find out...)
I tried the following (the local machine is Debian; the remote machine is CentOS), and it worked exactly as I think you're expecting:
~# ssh someone#somewhere 'nohup sleep 30 > out 2> err < /dev/null & echo $!'
someone#somewhere's password:
14193
~#
On the remote machine, I did ps -e, and saw this line:
14193 ? 00:00:00 sleep
So, clearly, on my local machine, the output is the PID of "sleep" executing on the remote machine.
Why are you adding bash to your command when sending it across an SSH tunnel?
I have a script I can run locally to remotely start a server:
#!/bin/bash
ssh user#host.com <<EOF
nohup /path/to/run.sh &
EOF
echo 'done'
After running nohup, it hangs. I have to hit ctrl-c to exit the script.
I've tried adding an explicit exit at the end of the here doc and using "-t" argument for ssh. Neither works. How do I make this script exit immediately?
EDIT: The client is OSX 10.6, server is Ubuntu.
I think the problem is that nohup can't redirect output when you come in from ssh, it only redirects to nohup.out when it thinks it's connected to a terminal, and I the stdin override you have will prevent that, even with -t.
A workaround might be to redirect the output yourself, then the ssh client can disconnect - it's not waiting for the stream to close. Something like:
nohup /path/to/run.sh > run.log &
(This worked for me in a simple test connecting to an Ubuntu server from an OS X client.)
The problem might be that ...
... ssh is respecting the POSIX standard when not closing the session
if a process is still attached to the tty.
Therefore a solution might be to detach the stdin of the nohup command from the tty:
nohup /path/to/run.sh </dev/null &
See: SSH Hangs On Exit When Using nohup
Yet another approach might be to use ssh -t -t to force pseudo-tty allocation even if stdin isn't a terminal.
man ssh | less -Ip 'multiple -t'
ssh -t -t user#host.com <<EOF
nohup /path/to/run.sh &
EOF
See: BASH spawn subshell for SSH and continue with program flow
Redirecting the stdin of the remote host from a here document while invoking ssh without an explicit command leads to the message: Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
To avoid this message either use ssh's -T switch to tell the remote host there is no need to allocate a pseudo-terminal or explicitly specify a command (such as /bin/sh) for the remote host to execute the commands provided by the here document.
If an explicit command is given to ssh, the default is to provide no login shell in the form of a pseudo-terminal, i. e. there will be no normal login session when a command is specified (see man ssh).
Without a command specified for ssh, on the other hand, the default is to create a pseudo-tty for an interactive login session on the remote host.
- ssh user#host.com <<EOF
+ ssh -T user#host.com <<EOF
+ ssh user#host.com /bin/bash <<EOF
As a rule, ssh -t or even ssh -t -t should only be used if there are commands that expect stdin / stdout to be a terminal (such as top or vim) or if it is necessary to kill the remote shell and its children when the ssh client command finishes execution (see: ssh command unexpectedly continues on other system after ssh terminates).
As far as I can tell, the only way to combine an ssh command that does not allocate a pseudo-tty and a nohup command that writes to nohup.out on the remote host is to let the nohup command execute in a pseudo-terminal not created by the ssh mechanism. This can be done with the script command, for example, and will avoid the tcgetattr: Inappropriate ioctl for device message.
#!/bin/bash
ssh localhost /bin/sh <<EOF
#0<&- script -q /dev/null nohup sleep 10 1>&- &
#0<&- script -q -c "nohup sh -c 'date; sleep 10 1>&- &'" /dev/null # Linux
0<&- script -q /dev/null nohup sh -c 'date; sleep 10 1>&- &' # FreeBSD, Mac OS X
cat nohup.out
exit 0
EOF
echo 'done'
exit 0
You need to add a exit 0 at the end.
On Cygwin, I want a Bash script to:
Create an SSH tunnel to a remote server.
Do some work locally that uses the tunnel.
Then shut down the tunnel.
The shutdown part has me perplexed.
Currently, I have a lame solution. In one shell I run the following to create a tunnel:
# Create the tunnel - this works! It runs forever, until the shell is quit.
ssh -nNT -L 50000:localhost:3306 jm#sampledomain.com
Then, in another shell window, I do my work:
# Do some MySQL stuff over local port 50000 (which goes to remote port 3306)
Finally, when I am done, I close the first shell window to kill the tunnel.
I'd like to do this all in one script like:
# Create tunnel
# Do work
# Kill tunnel
How do I keep track of the tunnel process, so I know which one to kill?
You can do this cleanly with an ssh 'control socket'. To talk to an already-running SSH process and get it's pid, kill it etc. Use the 'control socket' (-M for master and -S for socket) as follows:
$ ssh -M -S my-ctrl-socket -fNT -L 50000:localhost:3306 jm#sampledomain.com
$ ssh -S my-ctrl-socket -O check jm#sampledomain.com
Master running (pid=3517)
$ ssh -S my-ctrl-socket -O exit jm#sampledomain.com
Exit request sent.
Note that my-ctrl-socket will be an actual file that is created.
I got this info from a very RTFM reply on the OpenSSH mailing list.
You can tell SSH to background itself with the -f option but you won't get the PID with $!.
Also instead of having your script sleep an arbitrary amount of time before you use the tunnel, you can use -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes with -f and SSH will wait for all remote port forwards to be successfully established before placing itself in the background. You can grep the output of ps to get the PID. For example you can use
...
ssh -Cfo ExitOnForwardFailure=yes -N -L 9999:localhost:5900 $REMOTE_HOST
PID=$(pgrep -f 'N -L 9999:')
[ "$PID" ] || exit 1
...
and be pretty sure you're getting the desired PID
You can tell ssh to go into background with & and not create a shell on the other side (just open the tunnel) with a command line flag (I see you already did this with -N).
Save the PID with PID=$!
Do your stuff
kill $PID
EDIT: Fixed $? to $! and added the &
I prefer to launch a new shell for separate tasks and I often use the following command combination:
$ sudo bash; exit
or sometimes:
$ : > sensitive-temporary-data.txt; bash; rm -f sensitive-temporary-data.txt; exit
These commands create a nested shell where I can do all my work; when I'm finished I hit CTRL-D and the parent shell cleans up and exits as well. You could easily throw bash; into your ssh tunnel script just before the kill part so that when you log out of the nested shell your tunnel will be closed:
#!/bin/bash
ssh -nNT ... &
PID=$!
bash
kill $PID
You could launch the ssh with a & a the end, to put it in the background and grab its id when doing. Then you just have to do a kill of that id when you're done.
A simple bash script to solve your problem.
# Download then put in $PATH
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ijortengab/bash/master/commands/command-keep-alive.sh
mv command-keep-alive.sh -t /usr/local/bin
# open tunnel, put script in background
command-keep-alive.sh "ssh -fN -o ServerAliveInterval=10 -o ServerAliveCountMax=2 -L 33306:localhost:3306 myserver" /tmp/my.pid &
# do something
mysql --port 33306
# close tunnel
kill $(cat /tmp/my.pid)
https://github.com/aronpc/remina-ssh-tunnel
#!/usr/bin/env sh
scriptname="$(basename $0)"
actionname="$1"
tunnelname=$(echo "$2" | iconv -t ascii//TRANSLIT | sed -E 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9-]+/-/g' | sed -E 's/^-+|-+$//g' | tr A-Z a-z)
remotedata="$3"
tunnelssh="$4"
if [ $# -lt 4 ]
then
echo "Usage: $scriptname start | stop LOCAL_PORT:RDP_IP:RDP_PORT SSH_NODE_IP"
exit
fi
case "$actionname" in
start)
echo "Starting tunnel to $tunnelssh"
ssh -M -S ~/.ssh/sockets/$tunnelname.control -fnNT -L $remotedata $tunnelssh
ssh -S ~/.ssh/sockets/$tunnelname.control -O check $tunnelssh
;;
stop)
echo "Stopping tunnel to $tunnelssh"
ssh -S ~/.ssh/sockets/$tunnelname.control -O exit $tunnelssh
;;
*)
echo "Did not understand your argument, please use start|stop"
;;
esac
usage example
Edit or create new remmina server connection
schema
~/.ssh/rdp-tunnel.sh ACTION TUNNELNAME LOCAL_PORT:REMOTE_SERVER:REMOTE_PORT TUNNEL_PROXY
name
description
ACTION
start|stop
TUNNELNAME
"string identify socket" slugify to create socket file into ~/.ssh/sockets/string-identify-socket.control
LOCAL_PORT
the door that will be exposed locally if we use the same port for two connections it will crash
REMOTE_SERVER
the ip of the server that you would access if you had it on the proxy server that will be used
REMOTE_PORT
the service port that runs on the server
TUNNEL_PROXY
the connection you are going to use as a proxy, it needs to be in your ~/.ssh/config preferably using the access keys
I use the combination (% g-% p) of the remmina group name and connection name to be my TUNNELNAME (this needs to be unique, it will see the socket name)
pre-command
~/.ssh/rdp-tunnel.sh start "%g-%p" 63394:192.168.8.176:3389 tunnel-name-1
post-command
~/.ssh/rdp-tunnel.sh stop "%g-%p" 63394:192.168.8.176:3389 tunnel-name-1
you can and should use this script to access anything, I use it constantly to access systems and services that do not have a public ip going through 1,2,3,4,5 or more ssh proxies
see more into :
ssh config
ssh mach
ssh jump hosts
sshuttle python ssh
Refs:
https://remmina.org/remmina-rdp-ssh-tunnel/
https://kgibran.wordpress.com/2019/03/13/remmina-rdp-ssh-tunnel-with-pre-and-post-scripts/
Bash script to set up a temporary SSH tunnel
https://gist.github.com/oneohthree/f528c7ae1e701ad990e6
I am using the program synergy together with an ssh tunnel
It works, i just have to open an console an type these two commands:
ssh -f -N -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#OtherHost
synergyc localhost
because im lazy i made an Bash-Script which is run with one mouseclick on an icon:
#!/bin/bash
ssh -f -N -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#OtherHost
synergyc localhost
the Bash-Script above works as well, but now i also want to kill synergy and the ssh tunnel via one mouseclick, so i have to save the PIDs of synergy and ssh into file to kill them later:
#!/bin/bash
mkdir -p /tmp/synergyPIDs || exit 1
rm -f /tmp/synergyPIDs/ssh || exit 1
rm -f /tmp/synergyPIDs/synergy || exit 1
[ ! -e /tmp/synergyPIDs/ssh ] || exit 1
[ ! -e /tmp/synergyPIDs/synergy ] || exit 1
ssh -f -N -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#OtherHost
echo $! > /tmp/synergyPIDs/ssh
synergyc localhost
echo $! > /tmp/synergyPIDs/synergy
But the files of this script are empty.
How do I get the PIDs of ssh and synergy?
(I try to avoid ps aux | grep ... | awk ... | sed ... combinations, there has to be an easier way.)
With all due respect to the users of pgrep, pkill, ps | awk, etc, there is a much better way.
Consider that if you rely on ps -aux | grep ... to find a process you run the risk of a collision. You may have a use case where that is unlikely, but as a general rule, it's not the way to go.
SSH provides a mechanism for managing and controlling background processes. But like so many SSH things, it's an "advanced" feature, and many people (it seems, from the other answers here) are unaware of its existence.
In my own use case, I have a workstation at home on which I want to leave a tunnel that connects to an HTTP proxy on the internal network at my office, and another one that gives me quick access to management interfaces on co-located servers. This is how you might create the basic tunnels, initiated from home:
$ ssh -fNT -L8888:proxyhost:8888 -R22222:localhost:22 officefirewall
$ ssh -fNT -L4431:www1:443 -L4432:www2:443 colocatedserver
These cause ssh to background itself, leaving the tunnels open. But if the tunnel goes away, I'm stuck, and if I want to find it, I have to parse my process list and home I've got the "right" ssh (in case I've accidentally launched multiple ones that look similar).
Instead, if I want to manage multiple connections, I use SSH's ControlMaster config option, along with the -O command-line option for control. For example, with the following in my ~/.ssh/config file,
host officefirewall colocatedserver
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm_sockets/%r#%h:%p
the ssh commands above, when run, will leave spoor in ~/.ssh/cm_sockets/ which can then provide access for control, for example:
$ ssh -O check officefirewall
Master running (pid=23980)
$ ssh -O exit officefirewall
Exit request sent.
$ ssh -O check officefirewall
Control socket connect(/home/ghoti/.ssh/cm_socket/ghoti#192.0.2.5:22): No such file or directory
And at this point, the tunnel (and controlling SSH session) is gone, without the need to use a hammer (kill, killall, pkill, etc).
Bringing this back to your use-case...
You're establishing the tunnel through which you want syngergyc to talk to syngergys on TCP port 12345. For that, I'd do something like the following.
Add an entry to your ~/.ssh/config file:
Host otherHosttunnel
HostName otherHost
User otherUser
LocalForward 12345 otherHost:12345
RequestTTY no
ExitOnForwardFailure yes
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm_sockets/%r#%h:%p
Note that the command line -L option is handled with the LocalForward keyword, and the Control{Master,Path} lines are included to make sure you have control after the tunnel is established.
Then, you might modify your bash script to something like this:
#!/bin/bash
if ! ssh -f -N otherHosttunnel; then
echo "ERROR: couldn't start tunnel." >&2
exit 1
else
synergyc localhost
ssh -O exit otherHosttunnel
fi
The -f option backgrounds the tunnel, leaving a socket on your ControlPath to close the tunnel later. If the ssh fails (which it might due to a network error or ExitOnForwardFailure), there's no need to exit the tunnel, but if it did not fail (else), synergyc is launched and then the tunnel is closed after it exits.
You might also want to look in to whether the SSH option LocalCommand could be used to launch synergyc from right within your ssh config file.
Quick summary: Will not work.
My first idea is that you need to start the processes in the background to get their PIDs with $!.
A pattern like
some_program &
some_pid=$!
wait $some_pid
might do what you need... except that then ssh won't be in the foreground to ask for passphrases any more.
Well then, you might need something different after all. ssh -f probably spawns a new process your shell can never know from invoking it anyway. Ideally, ssh itself would offer a way to write its PID into some file.
just came across this thread and wanted to mention the "pidof" linux utility:
$ pidof init
1
You can use lsof to show the pid of the process listening to port 12345 on localhost:
lsof -t -i #localhost:12345 -sTCP:listen
Examples:
PID=$(lsof -t -i #localhost:12345 -sTCP:listen)
lsof -t -i #localhost:12345 -sTCP:listen >/dev/null && echo "Port in use"
well i dont want to add an & at the end of the commands as the connection will die if the console wintow is closed ... so i ended up with an ps-grep-awk-sed-combo
ssh -f -N -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#otherHost
echo `ps aux | grep -F 'ssh -f -N -L localhost' | grep -v -F 'grep' | awk '{ print $2 }'` > /tmp/synergyPIDs/ssh
synergyc localhost
echo `ps aux | grep -F 'synergyc localhost' | grep -v -F 'grep' | awk '{ print $2 }'` > /tmp/synergyPIDs/synergy
(you could integrate grep into awk, but im too lazy now)
You can drop the -f, which makes it run it in background, then run it with eval and force it to the background yourself.
You can then grab the pid. Make sure to put the & within the eval statement.
eval "ssh -N -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#OtherHost & "
tunnelpid=$!
Another option is to use pgrep to find the PID of the newest ssh process
ssh -fNTL 8073:localhost:873 otherUser#OtherHost
tunnelPID=$(pgrep -n -x ssh)
synergyc localhost
kill -HUP $tunnelPID
This is more of a special case for synergyc (and most other programs that try to daemonize themselves). Using $! would work, except that synergyc does a clone() syscall during execution that will give it a new PID other than the one that bash thought it has. If you want to get around this so that you can use $!, then you can tell synergyc to stay in the forground and then background it.
synergyc -f -n mydesktop remoteip &
synergypid=$!
synergyc also does a few other things like autorestart that you may want to turn off if you are trying to manage it.
Based on the very good answer of #ghoti, here is a simpler script (for testing) utilising the SSH control sockets without the need of extra configuration:
#!/bin/bash
if ssh -fN -MS /tmp/mysocket -L localhost:12345:otherHost:12345 otherUser#otherHost; then
synergyc localhost
ssh -S /tmp/mysocket -O exit otherHost
fi
synergyc will be only started if tunnel has been established successfully, which itself will be closed as soon as synergyc returns.
Albeit the solution lacks proper error reporting.
You could look out for the ssh proceess that is bound to your local port, using this line:
netstat -tpln | grep 127\.0\.0\.1:12345 | awk '{print $7}' | sed 's#/.*##'
It returns the PID of the process using port 12345/TCP on localhost. So you don't have to filter all ssh results from ps.
If you just need to check, if that port is bound, use:
netstat -tln | grep 127\.0\.0\.1:12345 >/dev/null 2>&1
Returns 1 if none bound or 0 if someone is listening to this port.
There are many interesting answers here, but nobody mentioned that the manpage of SSH does describe this exact case! (see TCP FORWARDING section). And the solution they offer is much simpler:
ssh -fL 12345:localhost:12345 user#remoteserver sleep 10
synergyc localhost
Now in details:
First we start SSH with a tunnel; thanks to -f it will initiate the connection and only then fork to background (unlike solutions with ssh ... &; pid=$! where ssh is sent to background and next command is executed before the tunnel is created). On the remote machine it will run sleep 10 which will wait 10 seconds and then end.
Within 10 seconds, we should start our desired command, in this case synergyc localhost. It will connect to the tunnel and SSH will then know that the tunnel is in use.
After 10 seconds pass, sleep 10 command will finish. But the tunnel is still in use by synergyc, so SSH will not close the underlying connection until the tunnel is released (i.e. until synergyc closes socket).
When synergyc is closed, it will release the tunnel, and SSH in turn will terminate itself, closing a connection.
The only downside of this approach is that if the program we use will close and re-open connection for some reason then SSH will close the tunnel right after connection is closed, and the program won't be able to reconnect. If this is an issue then you should use an approach described in #doak's answer which uses control socket to properly terminate SSH connection and uses -f to make sure tunnel is created when SSH forks to the background.
This is a follow-on question to the How do you use ssh in a shell script? question. If I want to execute a command on the remote machine that runs in the background on that machine, how do I get the ssh command to return? When I try to just include the ampersand (&) at the end of the command it just hangs. The exact form of the command looks like this:
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &"
Any ideas? One thing to note is that logins to the target machine always produce a text banner and I have SSH keys set up so no password is required.
I had this problem in a program I wrote a year ago -- turns out the answer is rather complicated. You'll need to use nohup as well as output redirection, as explained in the wikipedia artcle on nohup, copied here for your convenience.
Nohuping backgrounded jobs is for
example useful when logged in via SSH,
since backgrounded jobs can cause the
shell to hang on logout due to a race
condition [2]. This problem can also
be overcome by redirecting all three
I/O streams:
nohup myprogram > foo.out 2> foo.err < /dev/null &
This has been the cleanest way to do it for me:-
ssh -n -f user#host "sh -c 'cd /whereever; nohup ./whatever > /dev/null 2>&1 &'"
The only thing running after this is the actual command on the remote machine
Redirect fd's
Output needs to be redirected with &>/dev/null which redirects both stderr and stdout to /dev/null and is a synonym of >/dev/null 2>/dev/null or >/dev/null 2>&1.
Parantheses
The best way is to use sh -c '( ( command ) & )' where command is anything.
ssh askapache 'sh -c "( ( nohup chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
Nohup Shell
You can also use nohup directly to launch the shell:
ssh askapache 'nohup sh -c "( ( chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
Nice Launch
Another trick is to use nice to launch the command/shell:
ssh askapache 'nice -n 19 sh -c "( ( nohup chown -R ask:ask /www/askapache.com &>/dev/null ) & )"'
If you don't/can't keep the connection open you could use screen, if you have the rights to install it.
user#localhost $ screen -t remote-command
user#localhost $ ssh user#target # now inside of a screen session
user#remotehost $ cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &
To detach the screen session: ctrl-a d
To list screen sessions:
screen -ls
To reattach a session:
screen -d -r remote-command
Note that screen can also create multiple shells within each session. A similar effect can be achieved with tmux.
user#localhost $ tmux
user#localhost $ ssh user#target # now inside of a tmux session
user#remotehost $ cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &
To detach the tmux session: ctrl-b d
To list screen sessions:
tmux list-sessions
To reattach a session:
tmux attach <session number>
The default tmux control key, 'ctrl-b', is somewhat difficult to use but there are several example tmux configs that ship with tmux that you can try.
I just wanted to show a working example that you can cut and paste:
ssh REMOTE "sh -c \"(nohup sleep 30; touch nohup-exit) > /dev/null &\""
You can do this without nohup:
ssh user#host 'myprogram >out.log 2>err.log &'
Quickest and easiest way is to use the 'at' command:
ssh user#target "at now -f /home/foo.sh"
I think you'll have to combine a couple of these answers to get what you want. If you use nohup in conjunction with the semicolon, and wrap the whole thing in quotes, then you get:
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; nohup myprogram > foo.out 2> foo.err < /dev/null"
which seems to work for me. With nohup, you don't need to append the & to the command to be run. Also, if you don't need to read any of the output of the command, you can use
ssh user#target "cd /some/directory; nohup myprogram > /dev/null 2>&1"
to redirect all output to /dev/null.
This worked for me may times:
ssh -x remoteServer "cd yourRemoteDir; ./yourRemoteScript.sh </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 & "
You can do it like this...
sudo /home/script.sh -opt1 > /tmp/script.out &
It appeared quite convenient for me to have a remote tmux session using the tmux new -d <shell cmd> syntax like this:
ssh someone#elsewhere 'tmux new -d sleep 600'
This will launch new session on elsewhere host and ssh command on local machine will return to shell almost instantly. You can then ssh to the remote host and tmux attach to that session. Note that there's nothing about local tmux running, only remote!
Also, if you want your session to persist after the job is done, simply add a shell launcher after your command, but don't forget to enclose in quotes:
ssh someone#elsewhere 'tmux new -d "~/myscript.sh; bash"'
Actually, whenever I need to run a command on a remote machine that's complicated, I like to put the command in a script on the destination machine, and just run that script using ssh.
For example:
# simple_script.sh (located on remote server)
#!/bin/bash
cat /var/log/messages | grep <some value> | awk -F " " '{print $8}'
And then I just run this command on the source machine:
ssh user#ip "/path/to/simple_script.sh"
If you run remote command without allocating tty, redirect stdout/stderr works, nohup is not necessary.
ssh user#host 'background command &>/dev/null &'
If you use -t to allocate tty to run interactive command along with background command, and background command is the last command, like this:
ssh -t user#host 'bash -c "interactive command; nohup backgroud command &>/dev/null &"'
It's possible that background command doesn't actually start. There's race here:
bash exits after nohup starts. As a session leader, bash exit results in HUP signal sent to nohup process.
nohup ignores HUP signal.
If 1 completes before 2, the nohup process will exit and won't start the background command at all. We need to wait nohup start the background command. A simple workaroung is to just add a sleep:
ssh -t user#host 'bash -c "interactive command; nohup backgroud command &>/dev/null & sleep 1"'
The question was asked and answered years ago, I don't know if openssh behavior changed since then. I was testing on:
OpenSSH_8.6p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1g FIPS 21 Apr 2020
I was trying to do the same thing, but with the added complexity that I was trying to do it from Java. So on one machine running java, I was trying to run a script on another machine, in the background (with nohup).
From the command line, here is what worked: (you may not need the "-i keyFile" if you don't need it to ssh to the host)
ssh -i keyFile user#host bash -c "\"nohup ./script arg1 arg2 > output.txt 2>&1 &\""
Note that to my command line, there is one argument after the "-c", which is all in quotes. But for it to work on the other end, it still needs the quotes, so I had to put escaped quotes within it.
From java, here is what worked:
ProcessBuilder b = new ProcessBuilder("ssh", "-i", "keyFile", "bash", "-c",
"\"nohup ./script arg1 arg2 > output.txt 2>&1 &\"");
Process process = b.start();
// then read from process.getInputStream() and close it.
It took a bit of trial & error to get this working, but it seems to work well now.
YOUR-COMMAND &> YOUR-LOG.log &
This should run the command and assign a process id you can simply tail -f YOUR-LOG.log to see results written to it as they happen. you can log out anytime and the process will carry on
If you are using zsh then use program-to-execute &! is a zsh-specific shortcut to both background and disown the process, such that exiting the shell will leave it running.
A follow-on to #cmcginty's concise working example which also shows how to alternatively wrap the outer command in double quotes. This is how the template would look if invoked from within a PowerShell script (which can only interpolate variables from within double-quotes and ignores any variable expansion when wrapped in single quotes):
ssh user#server "sh -c `"($cmd) &>/dev/null </dev/null &`""
Inner double-quotes are escaped with back-tick instead of backslash. This allows $cmd to be composed by the PowerShell script, e.g. for deployment scripts and automation and the like. $cmd can even contain a multi-line heredoc if composed with unix LF.
First follow this procedure:
Log in on A as user a and generate a pair of authentication keys. Do not enter a passphrase:
a#A:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/a/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/home/a/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
3e:4f:05:79:3a:9f:96:7c:3b:ad:e9:58:37:bc:37:e4 a#A
Now use ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as user b on B. (The directory may already exist, which is fine):
a#A:~> ssh b#B mkdir -p .ssh
b#B's password:
Finally append a's new public key to b#B:.ssh/authorized_keys and enter b's password one last time:
a#A:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b#B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
b#B's password:
From now on you can log into B as b from A as a without password:
a#A:~> ssh b#B
then this will work without entering a password
ssh b#B "cd /some/directory; program-to-execute &"
I think this is what you need:
At first you need to install sshpass on your machine.
then you can write your own script:
while read pass port user ip; do
sshpass -p$pass ssh -p $port $user#$ip <<ENDSSH1
COMMAND 1
.
.
.
COMMAND n
ENDSSH1
done <<____HERE
PASS PORT USER IP
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
PASS PORT USER IP
____HERE