Best way to script remote SSH commands in Batch (Windows)

Question

I am looking to script something in batch which will need to run remote ssh commands on Linux. I would want the output returned so I can either display it on the screen or log it.

I tried putty.exe -ssh user@host -pw password -m command_run but it doesn't return anything on my screen.

Anyone done this before?

Answer 1

The -m switch of PuTTY takes a path to a script file as an argument, not a command.

Reference: https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/htmldoc/Chapter3.html#using-cmdline-m

So you have to save your command (command_run) to a plain text file (e.g. c:\path\command.txt) and pass that to PuTTY:

putty.exe -ssh user@host -pw password -m c:\path\command.txt

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Though note that you should use Plink (a command-line connection tool from PuTTY suite). It's a console application, so you can redirect its output to a file (what you cannot do with PuTTY).

A command-line syntax is identical, an output redirection added:

plink.exe -ssh user@host -pw password -m c:\path\command.txt > output.txt

See Using the command-line connection tool Plink.

And with Plink, you can actually provide the command directly on its command-line:

plink.exe -ssh user@host -pw password command > output.txt

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