Capture exit code for remote script?

Question

I have a shell script that runs on my server every day. It does some house cleaning and connects to a remote host to perform other tasks i.e.

#!/bin/bash

#do something...
...locally...

#run remote script...
ssh user@remotehost "/opt/process/verify.sh"

exit

It works fine but to be safe I would like to capture (if possible) the return code from "/opt/process/verify.sh" i.e.

• if fail, return "1" and send email to admin
• if success, return "0" and send email to developer.

I started reading about the command trap. Can I use it for that purpose? Is there another option?

Answer 1

ssh returns the return value of the command in question, or 255 if an error occurred in ssh itself. Simply check this value and take appropriate action.

Answer 2

You can use the $? variable to get the response code. For instance:

% ssh somebox /bin/true
% echo $?
0
% ssh somebox /bin/false
% echo $?
1