Question

I am trying to write a shell script that creates some directories on a remote server and then uses scp to copy files from my local machine onto the remote. Here’s what I have so far:

ssh -t user@server<<EOT
DEP_ROOT='/home/matthewr/releases'
datestamp=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)
REL_DIR=$DEP_ROOT"/"$datestamp
if [ ! -d "$DEP_ROOT" ]; then
    echo "creating the root directory"
    mkdir $DEP_ROOT
fi
mkdir $REL_DIR
exit
EOT

scp ./dir1 user@server:$REL_DIR
scp ./dir2 user@server:$REL_DIR

Whenever I run it I get this message:

Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.

And the script just hangs forever.

My public key is trusted on the server and I can run all the commands outside of the script just fine. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try ssh -t -t(or ssh -tt for short) to force pseudo-tty allocation even if stdin isn’t a terminal.

See also: Terminating SSH session executed by bash script

From ssh manpage:

-T      Disable pseudo-tty allocation.

-t      Force pseudo-tty allocation.  This can be used to execute arbitrary 
        screen-based programs on a remote machine, which can be very useful,
        e.g. when implementing menu services.  Multiple -t options force tty
        allocation, even if ssh has no local tty.