scp multiple remote files while entering password once

Question

I'm trying to write a script to copy multiple files (in multiple directories) from a remote host to my local machine.

My script is (more or less) as follows:

path1="/home/db/primary/*.xml"
path2="/tmp/log_*"
copyto="/home/pathtodesktop/Desktop/temp"

mkdir $copyto

scpcommand="scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no root@$address:\"$path1 $path2\" $copyto"
echo $scpcommand
$scpcommand

When I run the script, I get the following output:

scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no root@SERVER:"/home/db/primary/*.xml /tmp/log_*" /home/pathtodesktop/Desktop/temp
sh: syntax error: unterminated quoted string
cp: cannot stat '/tmp/log_*"': No such file or directory

The output of the echo is as expected. But when I copy the output above and run the command manually in the terminal, it works as expected with no errors.

So the ultimate question is, what am I doing wrong? The command seems to work fine when run manually in the terminal. Where is my syntax error?

Thanks for your help!

@tripleee Thanks for the link. This turned out to be the answer (but I can't mark it as such). — Drexlin, Oct 14 '14 at 18:08
possible duplicate of [Bash Argument Escaping](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26067249/bash-argument-escaping) — tripleee, Oct 14 '14 at 19:42

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 14 '14 at 16:21

1

Adding set -f will prevent the wildcards in your paths from being expanded locally (although you may run in to other issues with spaces/special characters).

(You can re-enable wildcards afterwards with set +f)

answered Oct 14 '14 at 16:21

Nick

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scp multiple remote files while entering password once

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