How to pass the function and variables to remote server using SSH

Question

I have created myscript.sh file in one of local linux server. I am trying to pass the variables and functions defined in(myscript.sh) to remote machine.

my_var="Myvar Value"
getIPAddress()
        {       
                echo $my_var
                ip_address=$(hostname -i)
                echo $ip_address
        }   
ssh user@remote "$(typeset -f getIPAddress); getIPAddress"

I am only getting the ip_address but not getting the value of $my_var. Is there a way to handle this.

Answer 1

You don't pass the value of the variable to the remote side. On the remote host, you re-create the function, but you don't create the variable the function depends on. You could do it with

ssh user@remote "$(typeset -f getIPAddress); my_var='$my_var'; getIPAddress"

or a bit shorter

ssh user@remote "$(typeset -f getIPAddress); my_var='$my_var' getIPAddress"

Note that in the first form, my_var is treated as shell variable, while in the second form, my_var is an environment variable inside your function.

I added quoting to catch the case that my_var contains white space.

Answer 2

Like this:

for server in foo bar base; do
    ssh user@$server <<-'EOF'
    my_var="Myvar Value"
    getIPAddress() {       
        echo "$my_var"
        ip_address="$(hostname -i)"
        echo "$ip_address"
    }
    getIPAddress
    EOF
done

Using shell here-doc.

See

man bash | less +/here-doc