How can I determine missing excape characters from current string command from master to remote server via SSH?

Hi AXI25,

If either {current_date} or {passwd_expire} is blank, you'll get an empty substitution and the date function won't work.  Are you sure that they're set on the remote server?

Run the command through "echo" to see what text will be executed.

 echo ${server} "echo $(( ($(date --date="$(echo ${passwd_expire})" +%s) - $(date --date="$(echo ${current_date})" +%s) )/(60*60*24) ))"

Try with the variables set and empty to see the difference.

Hello Kent,

In my original entry, I show the output for the variables are set and not zero/blank. Below you can see more detailed output.

[root@master ~]# echo ${passwd_expire}
Jun 17, 2020
[root@master ~]# echo ${current_date}
Jan 09, 2020

Select allOpen in new window

When running through echo, i know I can see it's missing an escape or subshell psossible. I'm getting the below output.

root@master]#  echo ${server} "echo $(( ($(date --date="$(echo ${passwd_expire})" +%s) - $(date --date="$(echo ${current_date})" +%s) )/(60*60*24) ))"
date: illegal option -- date=Jun 17, 2020
usage:  date [-u] mmddHHMM[[cc]yy][.SS]
        date [-u] [+format]
        date -a [-]sss[.fff]
date: illegal option -- date=Jan 09, 2020
usage:  date [-u] mmddHHMM[[cc]yy][.SS]
        date [-u] [+format]
        date -a [-]sss[.fff]
bash: ( -  )/(60*60*24) : syntax error: operand expected (error token is ")/(60*60*24) ")

Select allOpen in new window

The date command in AIX is much more limited that date on other systems.

I can't get it to execute on my local AIX system, much less a remote one.  I'm getting the same errors that you are.  The date function is the culprit.

The date command in AIX will set the date, or display the current date in any of many formats.

You cannot pass a date value to the date command and have it reformat it.  That appears to be what you're trying to do.

On this particular example I am currently testing this on Redhat Linux, but same errors as you're pointing out. I was able to run just the reformat portion also remotely, that wasn't an issue, when trying to narrow it down.  It appears when I try to calculate the delta and the arithmetic portion it's clobbering out. I can get the date format returned fine.  What I will try next is either running a script local to the remote server and then copy data back. Or, I'll try to collect the dates locally on the master server and do the arithmetic there.

It would be nice to have it done through one SSH string command, but I have other methods that seem to be working.

Ahhh....

Based on your user I assumed that this was an AIX issue.  :)

Thank you, both. As I didn't create my script as mentioned by skullnobrains, I was still running into same issue, it did make sense that it's running command locally.  What I ended up doing as example to work was the idea of it running it remotely as a whole script instead of it remotely through SSH. Collects the data on the remote server and just copies it back to master.  It's running over 500 plus servers and doing it as multi-threaded.

#!/bin/bash
# This is local script on master server

<code>

scp /var/tmp/remote_script.bsh remote_server:/var/tmp/

<code>

ssh remote_server "/var/tmp/remote_script.bsh"

<code>

scp -p remote_script:/var/tmp/remote_output.txt /var/tmp/

exit

i recommend you use the last variant i gave you. It pipes the  command directly into the remote shell which is both more efficient and more secure.

Quoting the 'EOF' ensures nothing is interpreted locally and the script is xferred exactly as typed.

I used this method with complex scripts very extensively in the past years. The return code is also transmitted properlt by ssh.