Linux - Running The Same Command on Many Machines at Once

Question

I have about a dozen Linux boxes that I occasionally need to run the same command(s) on. Is there an easier way (or automated way) to do this asides from logging on to each machine and running the command, one at a time? It's not the same commands all the time and it's not at a preset time so it's not something ideal for tools like cron.

Answer 1

Hm, maybe pconsole is the tool you want.

Answer 2

There's also ClusterSSH, which, well, does exactly what you think it does. Yay for descriptive naming!

Answer 3

You should check out Puppet here is a linux.com article on its setup and use

Answer 4

You may try Capistrano. Originally it is a Rails deployment tool, but it grew to do many things with remote machines.

For a more complete aproach to administration of multiple machine you may want to try Chef.

Answer 5

I guess I'll copy and paste my answer from Stack Overflow, which people seemed to like. . .

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The issue of how to run commands on many servers at once came up on a Perl mailing list the other day and I'll give the same recommendation I gave there, which is to use gsh: http://outflux.net/unix/software/gsh

gsh is similar to the "for box in box1_name box2_name box3_name" solution already given but I find gsh to be more convenient. You set up a /etc/ghosts file containing your servers in groups such as web, db, RHEL4, x86_64, or whatever (man ghosts) then you use that group when you call gsh.

[pdurbin@beamish ~]$ gsh web "cat /etc/redhat-release; uname -r"
www-2.foo.com: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 7)
www-2.foo.com: 2.6.9-78.0.1.ELsmp
www-3.foo.com: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 7)
www-3.foo.com: 2.6.9-78.0.1.ELsmp
www-4.foo.com: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2 (Tikanga)
www-4.foo.com: 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5
www-5.foo.com: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2 (Tikanga)
www-5.foo.com: 2.6.18-92.1.13.el5
[pdurbin@beamish ~]$

You can also combine or split ghost groups, using web+db or web-RHEL4, for example.

I'll also mention that while I have never used shmux, its website contains a list of software (including gsh) that lets you run commands on many servers at once. Capistrano has already been mentioned and (from what I understand) could be on that list as well.

Answer 6

Don't overlook pssh and dsh either; they're both much like gsh that @Philip Durbin mentioned.

Answer 7

Also take a look at func. Func lets you use a module architecture to control different aspects of a system, from dealing with packages, to running commands, etc. It works on a client/server module over SSL and has a fairly flexible authentication scheme as well.

Answer 8

You could also try ssh [user@]hostname [command] and then loop through the host names.

Answer 9

Other tools are:

• Rundeck
• ControlTier

RunDeck could also be descriped as the lightweight ControlTier.

These tools not only give you a cluster shell, but also a web frontend and you can save your jobs for future use.

Answer 10

You can also try Cluster SSH (cssh). I haven't used it, but there's an article on LinuxJournal.com called "Manage Multiple Servers Efficiently" that talks about it.

Answer 11

If you are on a KDE desktop, konsole has the "Send Input to all sessions" option. It applies to all the sessions opened in the same konsole window.

Answer 12

Use dish, simple and very powerful ! This script changed my life :) One script to rule them all !

http://nic-nac-project.org/~drimiks/gnu/dish.shtml

The diligence shell 'dish' executes commands via ssh/rsh/telnet/mysql simultaneously on several systems. Changing password, updating configuration, copying files, checking status, etc. on hundreds of nodes is made then simple. Dish is similar to the IBM's 'dsh' (distributed shell) but furthermore allows remote execution of commands requiring authentication. Compared to other open source packages which include a distributed shell (or similar tools) like ClusterIt, dancer's shell, parallel distributed shell, or C3, dish is a slim and easy to use remote-shell wrapper for cases where a flexible solution is needed. You can browse the dish's manual page on-line here.