Hi All,

Hope you all are doing good !!

I have written a script and am trying to copy one file to multiple servers. Now when I execute the command on command line it works fine, but the same command doesn't work when used in for-loop i.e. with variables.

Below is the code :

scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/testfile.sh admin@$i:/tmp/ >> FAILS

When I am using $i, then it asks me for password, but if I instead use IP, it works fine.

scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh admin@1.1.1.1:/tmp/ >> WORKS


Following things I have tried till yet, but failed :

scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh ${i}:/tmp/
scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh {$i}:/tmp/
scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh admin@"$i":/tmp/
/usr/bin/scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh admin@"$i":/tmp/
scp /some/folder/test1.sh admin@"$i":/tmp/


Thanks,
Yashwant

So, $i contains the IP address or the domain name?

Try:

I agree without seeing your entire script or at least the loop code where $i is defined it is not possible to say what is going wrong.

The basic code should work so it is something else.

Hi Sean/Michael,

@Sean:
$i contains IP address.

Below command didn't work :
scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh "admin@$i":/tmp/ >> Failed
/usr/bin/scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh "admin@$i":/tmp/ >> Failed

@Michael
Below is my code:
for i in `cat /some/folder/serverx.txt`
do
scp -r -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh "admin@$i":/tmp/
done

Just to confirm that, other commands do run in this loop correctly. It is just scp and sh commands that ask for password when executed via loops, else it works fine if executed on command line.

What is the detailed problem description behind the phrase "it doesn't work" there?

If it is asking for passwords in the script but using keys in the direct shell then it is a matter of pointing the script to the keys and the key agent.

Note the absence of -r when you copy a single file. Also note that -i may be needed to tell scp which key to try. See "man ssh" and "man scp" and if your script gets fancier you might look at sftp instead since that is actively developed and scp isn't and won't be. scp is just a replacement for the old, insecure rcp and that is all.

Also, try checking the environment variable $SSH_AUTH_SOCK first to see if it is available to your script.

Also how are you invoking the script? It is in the same shell or in a different environment completely?

@Turbocapitalist:
Tried following but failed,

scp -i /path/to/some/key.rsa -P 22 /some/folder/test1.sh "admin@$i":/tmp/


Also, I get blank output for echo SSH_AUTH_SOCK

what you posted is not enough, some important information is missing.
So what you told is:
I would suggest you to insert set -xv at the beginning of your script and check how your variables handled/passed.
Also I would suggest you to use scp -v to be more verbose

Hi Folks,

There was a silly mistake in my code.

Variable $i was being used at 2 different places, which caused the whole issue.

Thanks a lot guys for your support and apologies to trouble you all for my stupidity.