write a shell script to ssh to a remote machine and execute commands

Question

I have two questions:

1. There are multiple remote linux machines, and I need to write a shell script which will execute the same set of commands in each machine. (Including some sudo operations). How can this be done using shell scripting?
2. When ssh'ing to the remote machine, how to handle when it prompts for RSA fingerprint authentication.

The remote machines are VMs created on the run and I just have their IPs. So, I cant place a script file beforehand in those machines and execute them from my machine.

Answer 1

There are multiple remote linux machines, and I need to write a shell script which will execute the same set of commands in each machine. (Including some sudo operations). How can this be done using shell scripting?

You can do this with ssh, for example:

#!/bin/bash
USERNAME=someUser
HOSTS="host1 host2 host3"
SCRIPT="pwd; ls"
for HOSTNAME in ${HOSTS} ; do
    ssh -l ${USERNAME} ${HOSTNAME} "${SCRIPT}"
done

When ssh'ing to the remote machine, how to handle when it prompts for RSA fingerprint authentication.

You can add the StrictHostKeyChecking=no option to ssh:

ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l username hostname "pwd; ls"

This will disable the host key check and automatically add the host key to the list of known hosts. If you do not want to have the host added to the known hosts file, add the option -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null.

Note that this disables certain security checks, for example protection against man-in-the-middle attack. It should therefore not be applied in a security sensitive environment.