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Asked: 2026-06-10T06:38:28+00:00

I have a script in which I’m meticulously checking return codes for error conditions,

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I have a script in which I’m meticulously checking return codes for error conditions, so that I can abort early in the event of a failure. One step of this script involves running a command as the root user on another box, via ssh and sudo.

Consider:

ssh $HOST sudo $CMD
echo $?

ssh passes return codes back just fine, but even if $CMD returns a nonzero exit code, sudo still returns 0 after running the command.

How do I capture the return code to $CMD? I’m very partial to its being passed back as ssh‘s return code, but if there’s another simple method which can’t be confused by the output of $CMD, I’m all ears.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As it turns out, sudo is passing the return code properly. My test case very likely was overwriting $? with a subsequent execution or conditional test. I normally use a named variable to preserve $? to avoid such things, but there you are.

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