[adamd]

Ok, long story short, there is a bit of a friendly war going on between my friend and myself... Various things have been done to each others computers; nothing harmful.

My mission (that I came up with) is to remotely control his computer via Terminal and SSH to do the following...

• play a song through iTunes or by loading a file (rickroll)
• use "say" to speak random text

That's my list so far...

The reason for SSH. He doesn't know about it. It doesn't show up anywhere that I'm connecting with it, and I can control my scripts with PHP using it's exec() functions.

So, here's where I'm stuck...

I can log into SSH through terminal, and can run commands one by one, but this way, I have to type them in when I want to run them. What I would like to do, is have a single one-liner that I can execute. If it will work through terminal, I can get it to work with PHP.

This command needs to log in with SSH (with a password), then allow me to run a series of commands after it. Only ever 2 or 3 at max (eg: volume up, play song; or; volume up, say "hello", volume down).

If I can get this to work, he wont know what hit him... and it should teach him not to touch my computer when I'm not around...

Anyone got any ideas?

[Lutze]

<< No expert:

You need to have the script on his system in his profile to be really effective.

Is this going to be done over the net or locally - on a network? Do you know his username / password?

Perhaps, and don't take this wrong, you should maybe learn to lock your computer when you leave it. That's one that most reputable employers would rather their staff had.

[adamd]

This will be done locally, over a network. I already have an admin account on his computer, with a password that I know.

By script, you mean batch script?

[Lutze]

Originally Posted by adamd

This will be done locally, over a network. I already have an admin account on his computer, with a password that I know.

By script, you mean batch script?

Personally? I'd use an applescript. I don't know if it's possible to have an applescript sit in the background and wait for a rule to happen... but if it is then it would surely be better to have it activate whenever he types www or th then perform an action (use speech to say "I'm looking at pr0n") for example.

[teej]

Rather than typing in a password I think you'd be better off setting up an SSH key to handle authentication as it'll make automation a lot easier. Google will find a stack of guides to get you going with that.

Command execution can be done a number of ways. PHP is not one I'd consider because I find PHP clumsy as a general purpose scripting language.

The simplest thing you could do that (once you have keys in place), it just to send a series of commands when you invoke SSH, eg:

ssh -l username hostname.local. "say Hello ; sleep 2; say oi!"

If you want to do something that logic-wise isn't any more complicated but is lengthier, I'd just dump all the commands into a text file and just use back ticks to dump it into the SSH command. Text file:

say Hello
sleep 2
say oi

Command:

ssh -l username hostname.local -p 22 "`cat /pathto/textfilename`"

For something more complicated I'd look at writing a proper shell script (bash or expect) or if you know some Python or Ruby, Fabric or Capistrano respectively.

[BiRDBRAiN]

You need to setup a certificate/key on the target machine so that it authenticates you without requiring a password.

For an example of how to set this up have a look at this:
SSH login without password

That way you can send shell commands via SSH.

I use this to do remote SCP backups via shell scripts. Very easy once you get it going.