Running commands remotely returns unexpected output

Question

I want to kill a process remotely and I use ssh -i command like this:

ssh -i $app_rsa_file_path $app_server_user@$app_server_ip "ps aux | grep java | grep billing | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9 > /dev/null 2>&1"

if I run command directly on the server, it works fine; but in remote version it seems that awk has no effect and the command passes the whole output of ps aux | grep java | grep billing to kill and I get this:

kill: invalid option -- 'D'

Usage:
 kill [options] <pid> [...]

Options:
 <pid> [...]            send signal to every <pid> listed
 -<signal>, -s, --signal <signal>
                        specify the <signal> to be sent
 -l, --list=[<signal>]  list all signal names, or convert one to a name
 -L, --table            list all signal names in a nice table

 -h, --help     display this help and exit
 -V, --version  output version information and exit

For more details see kill(1).

Any idea about the reason?

Yes @LeeHoYo, that was the trick. Thanks. Could you please add it as an answer? — Zeinab Abbasimazar, Dec 06 '15 at 06:15
As ever, `grep foo | grep bar | awk '{ baz }'` is [better](http://www.iki.fi/era/unix/award.html) written `awk '/foo/ && /bar/ { baz }'` — tripleee, Dec 06 '15 at 12:23

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 06 '15 at 08:02

1

you use double-quotes " so you need to escape the $ special character:

edited Dec 06 '15 at 08:02

maskacovnik

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answered Dec 06 '15 at 07:35

Lee HoYo

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Running commands remotely returns unexpected output

1 Answers1