How to run a remote command in PuTTY after login & keep the shell running

puttyssh

What I'm trying to do: start a PuTTY session from the command line, login to remote machine and cd to provided directory.

putty.exe -agent -ssh some.host

That will open a session & login with my default login name & private key.

echo cd /some/remote/path/ > c:/stuff/cmd.txt
putty.exe -agent -ssh some.host -m 'c:/stuff/cmd.txt'

That will open a session, login, execute a command (cd in this case) and exit.

How do I open a session, login, cd and keep the session open?

Background: I use emacs under windows and often edit files on remote Unix machines using tramp & plink. I want to make a hotkey that opens a PuTTY session for that remote machine and chdirs to the directory of that file. Not a big deal on emacs side, but I'm stuck with PuTTY.

Best Answer

What the -m does is, that it makes PuTTY instruct the SSH server to start that command(s) INSTEAD of a shell. So once your command finishes, so does the session.

If you want to run the shell after the cd command, you need to add it explicitly to your cmd.txt, like:

cd /my/path ; /bin/bash

Also the -m implies "nopty"/non-interactive mode. To use an interactive shell you need to override that using the -t switch.

putty.exe -ssh example.com -m "c:\path\cmd.txt" -t

Alternatively use KiTTY with its -cmd switch, that does what you want (and does not need a temporary file).

Related Solutions

Run Remote ssh command with Full Login Shell

Just tell bash to execute ls and then itself in a login shell

$ ssh user@host  -t 'bash -l -c "ls;bash"'

Putty: login, execute command/change environment variable, and do NOT close the session

The target server needs to be configured to accept setting environment variables for the 1st option to work. The second is actually working fine, the problem is that it is designed to mimic

ssh user@foo command

which will just connect, run command and exit. You can have it remain open by giving it command; bash but that won't work for setting your variables sice a new shell will be started after the variable has been set.

So, short of having root access to the server so that you can enable the setting of environmental variables, the only way I can think of for you to do this is to edit ~/.bashrc the server and define your PS1 there. Add this line to ~/.bashrc:

PS1="some stuff"

Now, every time you log into that server, the prompt will be set for you.

Another way to do this would be to use a different rcfile for your bash session. Create a new file with these lines:

source /etc/profile
source ~/.bashrc
PS1='some stuff'

Save it as, for example, ~/.myps1, then in your putty settings, set the command to run on the remote server to:

bash --rcfile ~/.myps1

This will open a new shell session o the remote server and read in the file above which first reads .bashrc and then sets PS1.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Run Remote ssh command with Full Login Shell

Putty: login, execute command/change environment variable, and do NOT close the session

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