When ssh'ing, how can I set an environment variable on the server that changes from session to session?

Question

When I ssh into a server, how can I pass an environment variable from the client to the server? This environment variable changes between different invocations of ssh so I don't want to overwrite $HOME/.ssh2/environment every time I do an ssh call. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Of course, you can set the environment variable inside the command, however you'll have to be careful about quoting: remember that your shell is going to parse your local command line, and then the remote shell will have a go on the string it receives.

If you want a variable to get the same value on the server that it has on the client, try the SendEnv option:

ssh -o SendEnv=MYVAR server.example.com mycommand

This requires support from the server, though. With OpenSSH, the variable name has to be authorized in /etc/sshd_config.

If the server only allows certain specific variable names, you can work around that; for example a common setup allows LC_* through, and you can do the following:

ssh -o SendEnv=LC_MYVAR server.example.com 'MYVAR=$LC_MYVAR; unset LC_MYVAR; export MYVAR; mycommand'

If even LC_* is not an option, you can pass information in the TERM environment variable, which is always copied (there may be a length limit however). You'll still have to make sure that the remote shell doesn't restrict the TERM variable to designate a known terminal type. Pass the -t option to ssh if you're not starting a remote interactive shell.

env TERM="extra information:$TERM" ssh -t server.example.com 'MYVAR=${TERM%:*}; TERM=${TERM##*:}; export MYVAR; mycommand'

Ingenious! But someone points out to me that you can just define your variable directly in the command:

ssh -t server.example.com 'export MYVAR="extra information"; mycommand'

Or if passing a local variable:

ssh -t server.example.com 'export MYVAR="'$LOCALVAR'"; mycommand'

Answer 2

So, on your client, you have some environment variable, and you want that to be available to the remote command? I don't think there's a way to have ssh magically pass it along, but you can probably do something like this. Instead of using, say:

ssh remote.host my_command

You can do this:

ssh remote.host env ENV_VAR=$ENV_VAR my_command

Answer 3

You could try invoking a custom command, assuming you have password-less ssh login setup. On the server, edit your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys entry that corresponds to the key from you client:

command="export VARIABLE=<something>" ssh-rsa <key>

Look at this link in the section Forced Command for a little more detail.

Answer 4

If you can administrate the target host you can configure sshd to allow passing your local environment variables along to the target host.

From the sshd_config man page:

 PermitUserEnvironment
     Specifies whether ~/.ssh/environment and environment= options in
     ~/.ssh/authorized_keys are processed by sshd.  The default is
     "no".  Enabling environment processing may enable users to bypass
     access restrictions in some configurations using mechanisms such
     as LD_PRELOAD.

sshd configuration typically lives at /etc/ssh/sshd_config