How can I ssh directly to a particular directory?

Question

I often have to login to one of several servers and go to one of several directories on those machines. Currently I do something of this sort:

localhost ~]$ ssh somehost

Welcome to somehost!

somehost ~]$ cd /some/directory/somewhere/named/Foo
somehost Foo]$ 

I have scripts that can determine which host and which directory I need to get into but I cannot figure out a way to do this:

localhost ~]$ go_to_dir Foo

Welcome to somehost!

somehost Foo]$

Is there an easy, clever or any way to do this?

Answer 1

You can do the following:

ssh -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx "cd /directory_wanted ; bash --login"

This way, you will get a login shell right on the directory_wanted.

---

Explanation

-t Force pseudo-terminal allocation. This can be used to execute arbitrary screen-based programs on a remote machine, which can be very useful, e.g. when implementing menu services.

Multiple -t options force tty allocation, even if ssh has no local tty.

• If you don't use -t then no prompt will appear.
• If you don't add ; bash then the connection will get closed and return control to your local machine
• If you don't add bash --login then it will not use your configs because its not a login shell

Answer 2

You could add

cd /some/directory/somewhere/named/Foo

to your .bashrc file (or .profile or whatever you call it) at the other host. That way, no matter what you do or where you ssh from, whenever you log onto that server, it will cd to the proper directory for you, and all you have to do is use ssh like normal.

Of curse, rogeriopvl's solution works too, but it's a tad bit more verbose, and you have to remember to do it every time (unless you make an alias) so it seems a bit less "fun".

Answer 3

My preferred approach is using the SSH config file (described below), but there are a few possible solutions depending on your usages.

Command Line Arguments

I think the best answer for this approach is christianbundy's reply to the accepted answer:

ssh -t example.com "cd /foo/bar; exec \$SHELL -l"

Using double quotes will allow you to use variables from your local machine, unless they are escaped (as $SHELL is here). Alternatively, you can use single quotes, and all of the variables you use will be the ones from the target machine:

ssh -t example.com 'cd /foo/bar; exec $SHELL -l'

Bash Function

You can simplify the command by wrapping it in a bash function. Let's say you just want to type this:

sshcd example.com /foo/bar

You can make this work by adding this to your ~/.bashrc:

sshcd () { ssh -t "$1" "cd \"$2\"; exec \$SHELL -l"; }

If you are using a variable that exists on the remote machine for the directory, be sure to escape it or put it in single quotes. For example, this will cd to the directory that is stored in the JBOSS_HOME variable on the remote machine:

sshcd example.com \$JBOSS_HOME

SSH Config File

If you'd like to see this behavior all the time for specific (or any) hosts with the normal ssh command without having to use extra command line arguments, you can set the RequestTTY and RemoteCommand options in your ssh config file.

For example, I'd like to type only this command:

ssh qaapps18

but want it to always behave like this command:

ssh -t qaapps18 'cd $JBOSS_HOME; exec $SHELL'

So I added this to my ~/.ssh/config file:

Host *apps*
    RequestTTY yes
    RemoteCommand cd $JBOSS_HOME; exec $SHELL

Now this rule applies to any host with "apps" in its hostname.

For more information, see http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/ssh_config.5.html

Answer 4

I've created a tool to SSH and CD into a server consecutively – aptly named sshcd. For the example you've given, you'd simply use:

sshcd somehost:/some/directory/somewhere/named/Foo

Let me know if you have any questions or problems!

Answer 5

Based on additions to @rogeriopvl's answer, I suggest the following:

ssh -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx "cd /directory_wanted && bash"

Chaining commands by && will make the next command run only when the previous one was successful (as opposed to using ;, which executes commands sequentially). This is particularly useful when needing to cd to a directory performing the command.

Imagine doing the following:

/home/me$ cd /usr/share/teminal; rm -R *

The directory teminal doesn't exist, which causes you to stay in the home directory and remove all the files in there with the following command.

If you use &&:

/home/me$ cd /usr/share/teminal && rm -R *

The command will fail after not finding the directory.

Answer 6

In my very specific case, I just wanted to execute a command in a remote host, inside a specific directory from a Jenkins slave machine:

ssh myuser@mydomain
cd /home/myuser/somedir 
./commandThatMustBeRunInside_somedir
exit

But my machine couldn't perform the ssh (it couldn't allocate a pseudo-tty I suppose) and kept me giving the following error:

Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal

I could get around this issue passing "cd to dir + my command" as a parameter of the ssh command (to not have to allocate a Pseudo-terminal) and by passing the option -T to explicitly tell to the ssh command that I didn't need pseudo-terminal allocation.

ssh -T myuser@mydomain "cd /home/myuser/somedir; ./commandThatMustBeRunInside_somedir"

Answer 7

going one step further with the -t idea. I keep a set of scripts calling the one below to go to specific places in my frequently visited hosts. I keep them all in ~/bin and keep that directory in my path.

#!/bin/bash

# does ssh session switching to particular directory
# $1, hostname from config file 
# $2, directory to move to after login
# can save this as say 'con' then
# make another script calling this one, e.g.
# con myhost repos/i2c

ssh -t $1 "cd $2; exec \$SHELL --login"

Answer 8

I use the environment variable CDPATH

Answer 9

My answer may differ from what you really want, but I write here as may be useful for some people. In my solution you have to enter into the directory once and then every new ssh session goes to the same dir (after the first logout).

How to ssh to the same directory you have been in your last login. (I assume you use bash on the remote node.)

Add this line to your ~/.bash_logout on the remote node(!):

echo $PWD > ~/.bash_lastpwd

and these lines to the ~/.bashrc file (still on the remote node!)

if [ -f ~/.bash_lastpwd ]; then
    cd $(cat ~/.bash_lastpwd)
fi

This way you save your current path on every logout and .bashrc put you into that directory after login.

ps: You can tweak it further like using the SSH_CLIENT variable to decide to go into that directory or not, so you can differentiate between local logins and ssh or even between different ssh clients.

Answer 10

Another way of going to directly after logging in is create "Alias". When you login into your system just type that alias and you will be in that directory.

Example : Alias = myfolder '/var/www/Folder'

After you log in to your system type that alias (this works from any part of the system)
this command if not in bashrc will work for current session. So you can also add this alias to bashrc to use that in future

$ myfolder => takes you to that folder

Answer 11

I know this has been answered ages ago but I found the question while trying to incorporate an ssh login in a bash script and once logged in run a few commands and log back out and continue with the bash script. The simplest way I found which hasnt been mentioned elsewhere because it is so trivial is to do this.

#!/bin/bash

sshpass -p "password" ssh user@server 'cd /path/to/dir;somecommand;someothercommand;exit;'

Answer 12

Connect With User

In case if you don't know this, you can use this to connect by specifying both user and host

ssh -t <user>@<Host domain / IP> "cd /path/to/directory; bash --login"

Example: ssh -t admin@test.com "cd public_html; bash --login"

You can also append the commands to be executed on every login by appending it in the double quotes with a ; before each command

Answer 13

Unfortunately, the suggested solution (of @rogeriopvl) doesn't work when you use multiple hops, so I found another one. On remote machine add into ~/.bashrc the following:

[ "x$CDTO" != "x" ] && cd $CDTO

This allows you to specify the desired target directory on command line in this way:

ssh -t host1 ssh -t host2 "CDTO=/desired_directory exec bash --login"

Sure, this way can be used for a single hop too.

This solution can be combined with the usefull tip of @redseven for greater flexibilty (if no $CDTO, go to saved directory, if exists).

Answer 14

SSH itself provides a means of communication, it does not know anything about directories. Since you can specify which remote command to execute (this is - by default - your shell), I'd start there.

Answer 15

simply modify your home with the command: usermod -d /newhome username