Running Multiple Commands Using SSH

[cyap6176]

I am fairly new to (bash) shell scripting and am in need of assistance.

Consider workstations A and B. I want to be able to log into workstation A and then from there log into workstation B. Once inside workstation B, I want to set the DISPLAY environment variable, run a script, then exit out and return to workstation A again to repeat this process for whatever number of workstations.

Below is my code:

#
# Workstation IP addresses
#
workstation[0]=10.0.0.1
workstation[1]=10.0.0.2
workstation[3]=10.0.0.3


#
# function   : startClient()
# description: start clients at workstations
#              
function startClients()
{

     #
     # Start all clients
     #
     for i in ${workstation[@]}
     do
     echo "Starting Client at $i..."
     ssh -X $i                 # script stops here once I am ssh'd
     DISPLAY=10.0.0.96:0.0     # into the remote workstation
     export DISPLAY                    
     /usr/local/abc/myscript.sh
     echo "Exiting from $i..."    
     done     
}

startClients

The obvious problem with this code (I know) is the ssh -X line. In particular, the script will stop running at this point which I do not want.

I've already tried these variations (a command delimited by semicolons and a command enclosed in quotes delimited by semicolons) with no luck:

ssh -X $i DISPLAY=10.0.0.96:0.0; export DISPLAY; /usr/local/abc/myscript.sh

ssh -X $i 'DISPLAY=10.0.0.96:0.0; export DISPLAY; /usr/local/abc/myscript.sh'

If I were to do this process from my workstation (A) manually, namely

ssh -X $i     # after this command, inside workstation B
DISPLAY=10.0.0.96:0.0
export DISPLAY                    
/usr/local/abc/myscript.sh

then I have no problems.

Can someone please point me in the right direction? I need to be able to execute all these commands once logged into workstation B.

Thanks for your help!

[vsemaska]

The reason the script stops running at the 'ssh -X' line is because the script is waiting for the 'ssh' command to finish.

To get what you want to do is to run each 'ssh' command as a background process. This is done by putting a '&' at the end of the 'ssh' command:

ssh -X $i 'DISPLAY=10.0.0.96:0.0; export DISPLAY; /usr/local/abc/myscript.sh' &