Script to Cat specific file based on Date in File name

[hg4372]

Please Help.

I'm trying to write a script on Machine A that logs into Machine B that is rotating log files every half hour. So what I want to do is pull the latest file based on the date.

cd /temp
file_20091027130000
file_20091027133000
file_20091027140000
file_20091027143000

So at 13:15 I would want to perform a cat on the 1300 file.
13:45 the 1330 file
14:15 the 1400 file
etc...

I plan on putting the script into the cron on machine A, to login to machine B twice an hour and capture the information to a file on machine A.

Any suggestions ?

 

[Annihilannic]

This would just cat the latest matching file:

ssh machineb 'cat $(ls -t /tmp/file_* | head -1)'

I'm presuming that the current, unrotated log file would not match the file_* filespec.

Annihilannic.

 

[hg4372]

Thanks for the information. This works great if I do it manually, however when I try it in a script on MachineA I get the following error.

/tmp/File_*: No such file or directory.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Annihilannic]

It sounds like there may be a quoting problem. Can you post the actual script contents please?

Annihilannic.

 

[hg4372]

I have another script that launches this script to go out to several machines based on the Host name. The only thing that is really different I guess, is I'm using telnet at this point rather than ssh. So I dropped the single quotes and it works if I do it manually , just not in my script. I assume it has to do with the echo command and the "'s. Thanks for all your help on this. It will really help me out.

switch=$1
dt=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M)
username=xxxx
password=yyyy

for x in 1
do
{
echo $username
sleep 5
echo $password
sleep 5
echo "cd /opt/log"
sleep 3
echo "cat $(ls -t /opt/bsm/log/SBSCSubsystem-* | head -1)"
sleep 360
exit;

}|telnet $switch>>/logs/sbslogs/$switch.STAT_$dt

 

[Annihilannic]

Replace the "s with 's and it should work as you expect. With "s the $( ... ) is expanded on the local system, in the same way as $username is, for example, whereas with 's it is transmitted to the remote system as-is.

Annihilannic.

 

[hg4372]

Thanks so much. It took me a while before I could try it, but it works great. Thanks again for your help.