Ssh Action

The ssh action starts a shell command on a remote machine as a remote secure shell in background. The workflow job will wait until the remote shell command completes before continuing to the next action.

The shell command must be present in the remote machine and it must be available for execution via the command path.

The shell command is executed in the home directory of the specified user in the remote host.

The output (STDOUT) of the ssh job can be made available to the workflow job after the ssh job ends. This information could be used from within decision nodes. If the output of the ssh job is made available to the workflow job the shell command must follow the following requirements:

• The format of the output must be a valid Java Properties file.
• The size of the output must not exceed 2KB.

Note: Ssh Action will fail if any output is written to standard error / output upon login (e.g. .bashrc of the remote user contains ls -a).

Syntax:

<workflow-app name="[WF-DEF-NAME]" xmlns="uri:oozie:workflow:0.1">
    ...
    <action name="[NODE-NAME]">
        <ssh xmlns="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.1">
            <host>[USER]@[HOST]</host>
            <command>[SHELL]</command>
            <args>[ARGUMENTS]</args>
            ...
            <capture-output/>
        </ssh>
        <ok to="[NODE-NAME]"/>
        <error to="[NODE-NAME]"/>
    </action>
    ...
</workflow-app>

The host indicates the user and host where the shell will be executed.

IMPORTANT: The oozie.action.ssh.allow.user.at.host property, in the oozie-site.xml configuration, indicates if an alternate user than the one submitting the job can be used for the ssh invocation. By default this property is set to true .

The command element indicates the shell command to execute.

The args element, if present, contains parameters to be passed to the shell command. If more than one args element is present they are concatenated in order. When an args element contains a space, even when quoted, it will be considered as separate arguments (i.e. "Hello World" becomes "Hello" and "World"). Starting with ssh schema 0.2, you can use the arg element (note that this is different than the args element) to specify arguments that have a space in them (i.e. "Hello World" is preserved as "Hello World"). You can use either args elements, arg elements, or neither; but not both in the same action.

If the capture-output element is present, it indicates Oozie to capture output of the STDOUT of the ssh command execution. The ssh command output must be in Java Properties file format and it must not exceed 2KB. From within the workflow definition, the output of an ssh action node is accessible via the String action:output(String node, String key) function (Refer to section '4.2.6 Action EL Functions').

The configuration of the ssh action can be parameterized (templatized) using EL expressions.

Example:

<workflow-app name="sample-wf" xmlns="uri:oozie:workflow:0.1">
    ...
    <action name="myssjob">
        <ssh xmlns="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.1">
            <host>foo@bar.com<host>
            <command>uploaddata</command>
            <args>jdbc:derby://bar.com:1527/myDB</args>
            <args>hdfs://foobar.com:8020/usr/tucu/myData</args>
        </ssh>
        <ok to="myotherjob"/>
        <error to="errorcleanup"/>
    </action>
    ...
</workflow-app>

In the above example, the uploaddata shell command is executed with two arguments, jdbc:derby://foo.com:1527/myDB and hdfs://foobar.com:8020/usr/tucu/myData .

The uploaddata shell must be available in the remote host and available in the command path.

The output of the command will be ignored because the capture-output element is not present.

Appendix, Ssh XML-Schema

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
           xmlns:ssh="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.2" elementFormDefault="qualified"
           targetNamespace="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.2">
.
    <xs:element name="ssh" type="ssh:ACTION"/>
.
    <xs:complexType name="ACTION">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="host" type="xs:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
            <xs:element name="command" type="xs:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
            <xs:choice>
              <xs:element name="args" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
              <xs:element name="arg" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
            </xs:choice>
            <xs:element name="capture-output" type="ssh:FLAG" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
.
    <xs:complexType name="FLAG"/>
.
</xs:schema>

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
           xmlns:ssh="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.1" elementFormDefault="qualified"
           targetNamespace="uri:oozie:ssh-action:0.1">
.
    <xs:element name="ssh" type="ssh:ACTION"/>
.
    <xs:complexType name="ACTION">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="host" type="xs:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
            <xs:element name="command" type="xs:string" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
            <xs:element name="args" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
            <xs:element name="capture-output" type="ssh:FLAG" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
.
    <xs:complexType name="FLAG"/>
.
</xs:schema>