bash - Capture exit code from remote ssh command

Question

I'm looking at capturing the exit status of a remote ssh command within a shell script I have a shell script as follows :

function rSSH {
   local x
   echo "Running ssh command"
   x=$(ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $keyPair -o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p -i $keyPair user@$bastionIP 22" user@$IP "$cmd")

   x=$?
   echo "SSH status is : $x"
   if [ $x -eq 0 ];then
      echo "Success"

   else
      echo "Failure"
      exit 1
   fi
}

rSSH
exit 0

When I execute the above script as a background job with an invalid $bastionIP( testing failure scenario), it results with an exit code of 0 ( instead of 1) and the only information I see in the logs is the first echo "Running ssh command" and it just exits the script.

Can someone point out what I'm doing wrong or a better way to capture the exit status of the remote ssh command. Appreciate any help.

ahh yeah. That's probably causing the issue. @chepner Thanks for pointing that out. Totally missed that — outtoexplore
– outtoexplore, Commented Aug 7, 2016 at 4:54

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-07 13:01:10Z

4

The script appears to be running under set -e, which means when the ssh connection fails, the script exits immediately.

answered Aug 7, 2016 at 13:01

chepner

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Comments

Befen · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-10 19:01:20Z

3

Faced the same issue. I had to execute a bunch of commands over a remote ssh connection as below and the script will terminate before the 'echo'ing the 'return here='.

ssh -v -T -i ${KEY} -p${PORT} -tt ${USER}@${IP} /bin/bash -c "'
echo "Inside Script"
exit 12
'"
echo "return here=$?"

Thanks to the response of @chepner in the original post, it was the same issue that I was using set -e

Removing it helped to resolve.

answered Oct 10, 2017 at 19:01

Befen

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Comments

tale852150 · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-06 18:52:19Z

-1

Try using another variable for return code.

function rSSH {
   local x
   echo "Running ssh command"
   x=$(ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $keyPair -o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p -i $keyPair user@$bastionIP 22" user@$IP "$cmd")

   local ret_code
   ret_code=$?
   echo "SSH status is : $ret_code"
   if [ $ret_code -eq 0 ];then
      echo "Success"

   else
      echo "Failure"
      exit 1
   fi
}

rSSH
exit 0

edited Aug 6, 2016 at 18:52

answered Aug 6, 2016 at 17:02

tale852150

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3 Comments

tripleee Over a year ago

Why do you the variable name x is problematic? You should then change the local too.

tale852150 Over a year ago

You can keep the local.

tripleee Over a year ago

You need to update it to also declare ret_code as local.

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