Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watcgl!idallen
From: idallen@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Ian! D. Allen [CGL])
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: rsh return status
Message-ID: <6137@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 88 02:37:07 GMT
References: <1461@maccs.McMaster.CA>
Distribution: ont
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 24

dan@maccs.McMaster.CA (Dan Trottier) writes:
> The problem is that rsh(1) doesn't return the exit status of the command it
> runs.

Try a variant of this:

    #!/bin/sh

    PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb; export PATH
    umask 022

    status=` rsh somehost -n "somecommand && echo SUCCESS" 2>&1 `

    case "$status" in
    SUCCESS) echo "${0}: it worked" ;;
    *)       echo "${0}: it failed: $status" ;;
    esac

If your command produces output, you may have to fiddle things a bit
to get the SUCCESS onto stderr and only collect it.
You can also change '&&' to ';' and echo the actual return status from
the remote machine instead of the word SUCCESS.
-- 
        -IAN!  (Ian! D. Allen)      University of Waterloo