CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashsshenvironment-variables
aboria
aboria

Reputation: 133

How to stop dollar signs from being expanded in a variable when running SSH commands on a remote host?

So am creating a bash script that uses the usermod --password command to set user password on remote servers. I have successfully used the openssl passwd -1 command to encrypt my password and I have stored them in an environment variable as follows:

export $MYPASS=$(openssl passwd -l easypass)

Now when I echo my variable, it looks good! but when I use in the script, the password is not working, it turns out that the dollar sign in expanded when I ssh into the remote host .. How Can i stop this from happening?

SO locally it works amazing

echo $MYPASS
$1$bNs852RL$oFd5/p4jCV6TuDdEJprNZ0

Check what happens when I ssh:

 ssh webserver1 "echo $MYPASS"
/p4jCV6TuDdEJprNZ0

Any hints will be greatly appreciated. One very dumb way to fix it will be putting escape character before every dollar sign but I feel there is a better way ... thank you.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1222

Answers (2)

Shaqil Ismail
Shaqil Ismail

Reputation: 1961

using an escape quote is a simpler way but another way is, to use a single quote before and after your $MYPASS variable, then you can run tr -d "'" to remove the single quote after, if you need to before using the environment variable.

Upvotes: 0

that other guy
that other guy

Reputation: 123460

The problem is that your command is evaluated twice: once to run in your local shell, and once again when executed on the remote host. You therefore need to escape the result of the expansion.

Fortunately, bash4+ makes this easy with the @Q quote modifier:

var="tricky value with space, \\, \$s, 's and \"s"
ssh localhost "echo ${var@Q}"

Upvotes: 3

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