remote ssh issue with the iptables command

neteng996 · 09-20-2010, 11:19 PM

Hi. I'm trying to remote ssh into a server and get and iptables listing. I'm using this:

results=`ssh -q -l root remoteserver "iptables -nvL;"`
echo $results

My results show the first line of the remote server's iptables and half way thru the line I get a local directory listing and then the last portion of the remote iptables line. This will repeat until I have seen all of the rules within iptables.

If I remove the "v" so it looks like "iptables -nL;" I get back my normal iptables rules as expected.

Any suggestions?

unSpawn · 09-21-2010, 11:05 AM

Note that if you issue the same command on a machine you get entries with asterisks in them. Those get interpreted by the shell (that's why you see local directory listings) and they need to be escaped. What's worse is that you allow root access over SSH. That is not a good practice and completely unnecessary for just passively listing things: see Xinetd (script an entry with "server I= /sbin/iptables" and "server_args = --line-numbers -nxvL"), SNMP, CGI or even netcat could do.