up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I have a shell script which I would like to do one thing if the user is physically using the computer, and one thing if the user is logged in via SSH.

How would I go about doing that?

In more specific terms, my normal machine is OS X, and there I want to use a OS X graphical editor (BBEdit) as my EDITOR. However, if I'm SSHing into my Mac from my netbook, I want to use vim - I don't have a graphical connection to my Mac.

Thanks!

link|improve this question
feedback

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You should be able to use the SSH_CONNECTION, SSH_TTY, or DISPLAY environment variables.

See: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man1/ssh.1.html

 SSH_CONNECTION        Identifies the client and server ends of the connection.  The variable contains
                       four space-separated values: client IP address, client port number, server IP
                       address, and server port number.

Edit: SSH_CLIENT is also an option, but it doesn't appear in the man page.

link|improve this answer
AWESOME! Thank you very much for your link to the ssh man page! – RyanWilcox Jan 27 at 17:07
feedback
up vote 1 down vote

Compare your env locally and when logged in via SSH.

I have e.g. SSH_CONNECTION, SSH_CLIENT, SSH_TTY that are only defined when logged in via SSH.

link|improve this answer
You beat me to a few seconds ;) – Karolos Jan 27 at 16:45
@Karolos See, you still got the checkmark for the more thorough answer ;) – Daniel Beck Jan 27 at 17:08
I'm new here, so I am not used to think that several people are also looking at it too while I reply ;) – Karolos Jan 27 at 17:11
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

I believe /var/run/utmpx (see "man utmpx") has this information. If you run "who", you see that the who command can tell if you are connected from a remote node (and even knows where you connected from).

So you could always use the who command and massage the output to determine this.

Note: I believe the answers above (about using SSH_CONNECTION) are a better solution.

link|improve this answer
The utmpx file (more commonly named utmp) already has a strictly defined format. It's better to read it directly than parse who, since the latter is not always consistent. – grawity Jan 27 at 16:54
1  
Gwawity: I disagree from a shell script. If doing this from Python or C, I would agree, but from a shell script I would argue against parsing this (binary) file directly. But others have suggested using the SSH_* environment variables, which is a better answer. – Lee-Man Jan 27 at 17:47
Notifying @grawity about a response. – Daniel Beck Jan 27 at 18:00
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.