15

This post is about removing muliple files from the remote server, when sftp password less connection is setup. I have the code as below. Only first file in the variable $file_list gets deleted, when I have the variable set as,

$file_list="file1 file2"

sftp $USER@$HOST
rm $file_list
quit
SFTP-Session

I even tried executing the commands in prompt mode.

sftp $USER@$HOST
rm file1 file2

However, I still see that only file1 is getting deleted.

I am not sure if I am missing any basic command. I tried mdelete/mdel/mrm, which were rejected as Invalid command in sftp prompt window.

Ramesh
  • 39,297
bhawna
  • 153

5 Answers5

8

Here is one possible solution that can be added to bash script. This is not ideal as it will make a new connection for each file.

#!/bin/bash
# set variables
USER="username"
HOST="hostname"
file_list="file1 file1 file3 file4"
# delete each file
for file in $file_list; do
    echo "rm $file" | sftp $USER@$HOST
done
exit 0

This one-liner is far better! file1-9 being file names to remove, use a variable if you like, it's the same thing.

for file in file1 file2 file3 file4 file5 file6 file7 file8 file9; do echo -e "rm $file" >> sftp_batch; done; sftp -b sftp_batch username@hostname; rm sftp_batch
mbiber
  • 338
  • What if the files have white spaces in their name? Will this solution work? – codeforester Apr 03 '18 at 01:16
  • You can quote the file names. If you have many of them I suggest you look into bash parameter expansion to get best results. Generally for simplicity an admin will not allow filenames with whitespaces and related characters. – mbiber Apr 04 '18 at 19:19
3

I typically use lftp to do this.

Setup - on rmeote server skinner

$ mkdir adir
$ touch afile1 afile2
$ ls
afile1  afile2

now we delete

$ file_list="afile1 afile2"
$ lftp sftp://sam@skinner -e "cd ~/adir; mrm $file_list"
cd ok, cwd=/home/sam/adir    
rm ok, 2 files removed                 
lftp sam@skinner:~/adir> ls
drwxr-xr-x    2 sam      users        4096 Nov  4 11:52 .
drwxr-x---  131 sam      users       20480 Nov  4 11:51 ..
lftp sam@skinner:~/adir> bye

To make it a single command:

$ lftp sftp://sam@skinner -e "cd ~/adir; mrm $file_list; bye"
slm
  • 369,824
2

If you can sftp, can you not run ssh? If so then a command such as:

 ssh user@hostname rm file1 file2

should work fine. If you use public/private SSH keys there will be no password prompt.

mdpc
  • 6,834
  • Yes it worked, but the above command does not create any log information, and the requirement is to create log as well (Though i didn't specify it in the question). Thanks – bhawna Nov 05 '14 at 08:58
  • 1
    This is worth pointing out, but having said that, it is quite common for administrators to grant sftp but not ssh access to a server. – Tasos Papastylianou Dec 31 '20 at 14:43
1

You cannot give a list to the rm command in sftp, only takes one path as is written in the man page:

rm path
    Delete remote file specified by path.
user90256
  • 67
1

If those are the file names. You could delete them using a glob pattern with

rm file*
Philip Rego
  • 115