Can I ssh somewhere, run some commands, and then leave myself a prompt?

Question

I find myself needing to log into various servers, set environment variables, and then work interactively.

e.g.

$ ssh anvil jla@anvil$ export V=hello jla@anvil$ export W=world jla@anvil$ echo $V $W hello world 

How can I combine the first few commands, and then leave myself at a prompt?

Something like:

$ ssh anvil --on-login 'export V=hello; export W=world;' jla@anvil$ echo $V $W hello world 

Obviously this is a model problem. What I am really asking is 'how do I ssh to a different machine, run some commands, and then continue as if I'd run them by hand?'

Answer 1

Probably the simplest thing is:

 $ ssh -t host 'cmd1; cmd2; sh -i' 

If you want to set variables, do:

 $ ssh -t host 'cmd1; cmd2; FOO=hello sh -i' 

Note that this is a terrible hack, and you would be much better off putting your desired initial commands in a script and doing:

 $ scp setup host:~ $ ssh host host$ . setup 

Answer 2

You could also use the following expect script:

#!/usr/bin/expect -f spawn ssh $argv send "export V=hello\n" send "export W=world\n" send "echo \$V \$W\n" interact