Home / server / Questions / 484343
Accepted
Luke
Asked: 2013-03-04 18:56:30 +0800 CST

SSH remote execute command with special characters

  • 772

I have a problem executing a remote command through SSH that has special character in it. I'm trying to export a database from MySQL for back up purposes. This is the command I have in my local script:

#!/bin/bash
ssh user@host "mysqldump -u dbname -p'p$ssw0rd' --lock-tables=false dbname > ~/sites/mysite/backup/dbname.sql"

As you can see I'm using the ' characters around my password. When I execute this script I get the following error:

mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'dbname'@'localhost' (using password: YES) when trying to connect

However, when I ssh into the machine manually and execute the command it executes just fine. I get the impression that through executing the command through ssh something is lost and the password doesn't come through.

How can I execute my command with special characters through ssh?

mysql

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can try escaping the special characters in the command that you are passing to the ssh. In which case your

    p$ssw0rd

    becomes

    p\$ssw0rd

    Since the shell you are using might interpret "\" character differently, I can not vouch for 100% solution to your case, but it won't hurt to try.

    • 6

  2. Why don't you just specify your credentials in an options file?

    Edit ~/.my.cnf and add something like this:

    [mysql]
user = 'dbname'
password = 'p$ssw0rd'

    Make sure you run $ chmod 600 ~/.my.cnf to restrict access to that file.

    Then you don't need to specify those in your SSH command. This is arguably a safer way to do thing anyway, as usernames/passwords don't show up in either your ~/.bash_history or the running process list (which is viewable by all users).

    • 2