Question

Is there a way in Java to get an environment variable from a remote server?
I am currently executing:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[] { 
     "ssh", "myuser@myserver", "source myenvfile; echo $MY_VAR" 
}); 

But it returns blank (although my variable should contain something).

I get a result for commands such as df but none for echo. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?

EDIT : Does anyone have a better solution that this to do so ?

NB: I want to avoid the use of a SSH library.

Thank you in advance for helping me.

Answer 1

There is actually a better solution: using a ProcessBuilder.

Runtime.getRuntime().exec() has quite a few problems which make it not really suitable for process execution.