Often times System Administrators need to copy a file to remote servers with root authority.  One example might be to push out an updated resolv.conf file to all servers.   However, often times remote root logins are disabled so it can be difficult to copy files with root authority if root logins are disabled.

 

Here is a quick and easy method to copy files using root authority even if remote root logins are disabled.  For this method to work, you will need the following setp:

 

• SSH keys to all remote servers as a regular user.
• sudo access to root as the regular user with the sudo "NOPASSWD" option.

 

Once this is done, you can use a combination of "cat", "sudo", and "ssh" to easily push out a file to mulitple servers with root authority.. 

 

Here is an example of pushing out a new resolv.conf file to all servers listed in the "serverlist" file:

 

for server in `cat serverlist`; do echo $server; cat resolv.conf | ssh -o "BatchMode yes" -q $server "sudo su -c 'cat - > /etc/resolv.conf'"; done

 

It works by catting the file to be transferred and pipping it to the SSH connection.  Within the SSH connection we sudo to root and then use cat to write the standard input to the file. 

This will also work with binary files - not just text files..

Tags:  sudo aix ssh linux