The rsync command with the –list-only parameter allows the user to list filenames on a remote machine.
But by default, it looks like this.
jason@Yog-Sothoth » ~ » $ rsync --list-only jason@192.168.1.6:/home/jason/Documents/ jason@192.168.1.6's password: drwxr-xr-x 4,096 2018/05/09 09:49:49 . -rw-r--r-- 867,863 2018/04/19 12:44:56 altis_insurgency_altis.pbo -rw-rw-r-- 681,638 2018/05/04 09:03:16 pg768.txt -rwxrwxr-x 166 2018/01/17 09:48:52 rhsafrf.0.4.5.bikey -rwxrwxr-x 166 2018/01/17 09:40:34 rhsgref.0.4.5.bikey -rwxrwxr-x 165 2018/01/17 09:40:32 rhssaf.0.4.5.bikey -rwxrwxr-x 166 2018/01/17 09:45:58 rhsusaf.0.4.5.bikey |
But by adding an awk one-liner that accepts a pipe, this can be filtered out. Now it can look like the example below.
jason@Yog-Sothoth » ~ » $ rsync --list-only jason@192.168.1.6:/home/jason/Documents/ | awk '{ $1=$2=$3=$4=""; print substr($0,5); }' jason@192.168.1.6's password: . altis_insurgency_altis.pbo pg768.txt rhsafrf.0.4.5.bikey rhsgref.0.4.5.bikey rhssaf.0.4.5.bikey rhsusaf.0.4.5.bikey |
This gives our network user the ability to filter out unwanted detail and avoid information overload. This is a very, very useful networking trick, this is good for keeping track of what files are on a remote server.
This example below, shows how to run a command on the remote machine after the previous command completes. In this example, I am running the ps command on the remote machine to get information about the running processes.
jason@Yog-Sothoth » ~ » $ rsync --list-only jason@192.168.1.6:/home/jason/Documents/ | awk '{ $1=$2=$3=$4=""; print substr($0,5); }' ; ssh 192.168.1.6 'ps' jason@192.168.1.6's password: . altis_insurgency_altis.pbo pg768.txt rhsafrf.0.4.5.bikey rhsgref.0.4.5.bikey rhssaf.0.4.5.bikey rhsusaf.0.4.5.bikey [email protected]'s password: PID TTY TIME CMD 1045 ? 00:00:00 systemd 1046 ? 00:00:00 (sd-pam) 1050 ? 00:00:00 fluxbox 1107 ? 00:00:00 ssh-agent 1110 ? 00:00:00 dbus-launch 1111 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon 2200 ? 00:00:00 sshd 2201 ? 00:00:00 ps |
I hope you find these examples very useful, I have had fun getting these together and they are useful on a Linux network.
On my computer – the text in your boxes is completely invisible unless I highlight it all.
Thank you for the great tip – this is what I was looking for – that is why I had to highlight it to finally find it.