ssh problem - no such file or directory - perl

I have a script in remote host which I run as ./test /a/b/c/f and it runs perfectly fine on the maching.
Now I am on host machine, I run the same script as ssh root#dst "./test /a/b/c/f" and this too runs fine.
But from my perl script I execute it using backticks as
$file = "/a/b/c/f";
`ssh root\#dst "./test $file"`;
or
system("ssh root\#dst \"./test $file\" ");
it says bash:./test no such file or directory.
I tried escaping $file with single \ and \. even that does not work. Any idea how to solve this,
Thanks.

Have you tried using an absolute path instead of one based on ./ ? It'll probably solve this problem, and it's safer in general (especially when connecting as root) than depending on whatever sets the cwd (probably bash based on history) to set it the same way every time.

Related

Perl backtick ignores everything past the first space

I have a command
my $output = `somecommand parm1 parm2`;
When I try to run this Perl script I get the message
Can't exec "somecommand" at .....
It seems it is not seeing anything past the first space in between the backticks. I have a friend who runs this in a different environment and it runs fine.
What could I have in my environment that would cause this? I am running Perl v5.20 but so is my friend.
Perl's not ignoring the command parameters, it's just mentioning only the part of the command that it has a problem with -- it can't find somecommand
Whatever your somecommand is, it's not a shell command and it's not in a directory listed in your PATH variable
Change PATH to add its location to the end and it will work for you. You can do that system-wide or you dan modify it temporarily in your Perl code by manipulating $ENV{PATH} before you run the command

Run a perl script on remote machine from local machine using Telnet or SSH with Perl

I want to run a Perl script in a remote machine using telnet or ssh. The script is on my local host.how can do this. Can anyone please help me on this?
If you for some reason don't want to copy the script to the remote host and then run it, you can send the script to the Perl interpreter over stdin. If perl doesn't get either a script name of a script on the command line it tries to read the script on stdin. So this would work:
ssh user#remote perl < my_script.pl
Of course this requires that all necessary modules are already installed on the remote host. If you script only have pure perl dependencies you can work around this restriction by using App::FatPacker to make your script (more) self contained.
But if this is an recurring task I would recommend getting the script deployed correctly to your remote host.
scp your script to remote machine.
ssh user#remote 'perl /path/to/remote/script.pl'
Using HERE document across SSH might also do the trick you are after. You can run at least a BASH script without first separately copying it to remote. I have not verified anything else than BASH but no reason to doubt either. Please see:
ssh + here document + interactive mode

How can i run perl script from anywhere in unix environment?

I have this perl script that I need to distribute to my coworkers who want to run the script from anywhere in the unix environment. What can I do on my part to make running this PERL script easy for them? For example, they can just have the PERL script somewhere in their directory and run just typing
./xyz.pl ttt.conf
with no path declared (like /home/abc/bin/ddd/xyz.pl ttt.conf).
The way I used to do it is add a "bin" directory in your home directory, and add it to the $PATH variable.. then you can add any script you want to use to that directory.
I am no longer familiar with the exact syntax, but something like:
in .bashrc:
$PATH = ( $PATH , $HOME/bin )
Then place the script in /home/user/bin (assuming $HOME == /home/user). When you reload the shell, it will be usable like any normal command/program.
ETA: See robert's comment below on syntax. Also, to allow your co-workers to use a script of yours, you can simply use a hard-coded path, such as /home/patrick/bin.
Put the script in /usr/local/bin (or anywhere else in $PATH). Your sysadmin may have to help you.
The technique I use is:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
This is a common way of getting the command interpreter to find Perl without either (a) moving the file, or (b) declaring the explicit path for Perl in the shebang.
It's mentioned under portability at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)
You all are kind of right... but that perl script can sit in your path till the cows come home... and it ain't gonna run... until you set the executable bit....
:bin localadmin$ ./perlextip
-bash: ./perlextip: Permission denied
:bin localadmin$ chmod +x perlextip
:bin localadmin$ ./perlextip
Exit 0! Yeehaw.
Also, it should be noted that it need not be IN your path.... You can just call it by the full path, preceeded with a period and a slash, to execute it..
:/ localadmin$ ./ServiceData/UNIX/bin/extip
Exit 0! Yeehaw.
You can also create an alias for such a command in your ~/.bash_profile, or the such, which will let you make a system-wide shortcut of sorts, and you can even throw in a sudo, or the like, if you were so inclined... Then just call that "extip" by name anywhere, you'll be prompted for a password and, all will be well in the world.
alias extip='sudo ./ServiceData/UNIX/bin/extip'

Is it possible to have Perl run shell script aliases?

Is it possible to have a Perl script run shell aliases? I am running into a situation where we've got a Perl module I don't have access to modify and one of the things it does is logs into multiple servers via SSH to run some commands remotely. Sadly some of the systems (which I also don't have access to modify) have a buggy SSH server that will disconnect as soon as my system tries to send an SSH public key. I have the SSH agent running because I need it to connect to some other servers.
My initial solution was to set up an alias to set ssh to ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no, but Perl runs the ssh binary it finds in the PATH instead of trying to use the alias.
It looks like the only solutions are disable the SSH agent while I am connecting to the problem servers or override the Perl module that does the actual connection.
Perhaps you could put a command called ssh in PATH ahead of the ssh which runs ssh as you want it to be run.
Alter the PATH before you run the perl script, or use this in your .ssh/config
Host *
PubkeyAuthentication no
Why don't you skip the alias and just create a shell script called ssh in a directory somewhere, then change the path to put that directory before the one containing the real ssh?
I had to do this recently with iostat because the new version output a different format that a third-party product couldn't handle (it scanned the output to generate a report).
I just created an iostat shell script which called the real iostat (with hardcoded path, but you could be more sophisticated), passing the output through an awk script to massage it into the original format. Then, I changed the path for the third-party program and it started working fine.
You could declare a function in .bashrc (or .profile or whatever) with that name. It could look like this (might break):
function ssh {
/usr/bin/ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no "$#"
}
But using a config file might be the best solution in your case.

Why does my command-line not run from cron?

I have a perl script (part of the XMLTV family of "grabbers", specifically tv_grab_oztivo).
I can successfully run it like this:
/sw/bin/perl /path/to/tv_grab_oztivo --output /path/to/tv.xml
I use the full paths to everything to eliminate issues with the Working Directory. Permissions shouldn't be a problem.
So, if I run it from the Terminal (Mac OSX) it works just fine.
But when I set it to run via a cron job, nothing appears to happen at all. No output is created etc.
There isn't anything wrong with the crontab as far as I can see, because if I substitute a helloworld.pl for the actual script, it runs just fine at the right time.
So, what can I do to debug? I can see from looking at %ENV in the two cases that the environment is very different, but what other approaches can I take to debugging? How can I see the output of the cron job, which might be some kind of perl "die" message or "not found" message from the shell or whatever?
Or should I be trying to somehow give the cron version of the command the same environment as when it's running as me?
It's often because you don't get the full environment when running under cron. Best bet is to capture the ouput by using the command:
( /sw/bin/perl /path/to/tv_grab_oztivo ... ) >/tmp/qq 2>&1
and then have a look at /tmp/qq.
If it does turn out to be a missing environment, then you may need to put:
. ~/.profile
or something similar, into the execution chain of your cron job, such as:
( . ~/.profile ; /sw/bin/perl /path/to/tv_grab_oztivo ... ) >/tmp/qq 2>&1
If you're looking at %ENV in the two cases, I'd suggest that, as a first step in your perl script, set %ENV to what it is in a cron job, and then trying to run it from the command line. You may need to exec yourself once for this to take full control:
BEGIN {
if (exists $ENV{something_in_your_env_not_in_cron}) {
%ENV = (...);
exec $^X, $0, #ARGV;
}
}
Now try running it, and seeing if there's anything you can do to debug it (including running under perl -d if required). Most likely, you'll find that you end up adding items back into %ENV one at a time until it magically starts working (LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a good one for this, but ORACLE_HOME or DB2HOME for Oracle or DB2 apps might be good choices, too). Then you can either set the variable in your script, or in the crontab.
I'd run a simple shell script by absolute path from the cron command.
Inside that script, I'd ensure that I trapped stdout and stderr to a known (or knowable) file. I'd also ensure that enough of your environment is set. On Unix, you get almost no environment set at all when you run a command via cron - I'm not sure about MacOS X. The standard culprit for problems is PATH. I have a separate .cronfile that sets my working environment enough that I usually don't have problems - that's an analogue of .profile.
On occasion if you can't figure out what's going wrong with your command line, the simplest way to fix it is to turn the whole thing into a shell script. Ideally you shouldn't have to do this, but it can be the fastest way to solve the problem.
File: /files/cron1.sh
#!/bin/sh
/sw/bin/perl /path/to/tv_grab_oztivo --output /path/to/tv.xml
And then in cron:
/files/cron1.sh
This allows you to test the script independent of cron. Remember though that your login shell runs with different environment variables than cron does.
cron usually captures the output of stdout and stderr and e-mailes any output to the crontab owner.
Did you double check your crontab entry to make sure it's valid and will execute at the right time?
Make sure that the script does not need any environment variables set. Otherwise wrap it in another (bash) script, where you can set the environment variables that the other script expects.