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atx
Asked: 2010-12-29 00:53:22 +0800 CST

Test if login is an scp connection

  • 772

I'm echo'ing various machine statistics on login, but this is problematic for SCP and SFTP, is there a shell variable I can test for?

linux bash shell scp

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In bash, I use shopt -q login_shell to test for that. For example in .bashrc:

    if shopt -q login_shell
then
    echo "interesting stuff"
fi

    This should keep the "interesting stuff" out of your scp/sftp.

    • 7

  2. According to the man page, you should test for the presence of "i" in $-.

    PS1 is set and $- includes i if bash is interactive, allowing a shell script or a startup file to test this state.

    For example:

    if [[ $- == *i* ]]
then
    # do interactive stuff
fi
    • 4

  3. Historically, in cleanly configured bourne-style shells, it's "test if PS1 is set", but that's broken if some joker exports PS1 to the environment.

    The SUS standards-compliant method is to test if 'i' is in $-, as Dennis notes, although [[ ... ]] is non-standard, as is the == comparator. So the most portable standards-compliant check is:

    case $- in
 *i*) # do interactive stuff
  ;;
esac

    Then you have shopt -q login_shell for bash (per Cakemox), and both [[ -o interactive ]] and [[ -o login ]] for zsh.

    • 1