Oracle Shell Scripting

Oracle UNIX/Linux script tips

Transferring Files Between Systems

Transferring files between machines is often necessary for backups, duplicating databases, moving files from development to production systems and a host of other daily tasks. There are several tools which can be used for moving files around, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Here we?ll focus on the most flexible and secure tools available.

There are two tools which are typically available for securely transferring files between systems; sftp and scp. Both offer ssh protocol security but they work somewhat differently.

sftp - Secure FTP

While sftp is typically used interactively in the same way the ftp application would be used, it can also read commands from a file in batch mode. Here's an example of sftp being used interactively:

$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
$ sftp sprog
Connecting to sprog...
Password: password
sftp> cd /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/network/admin
sftp> put tnsnames.ora
Uploading tnsnames.ora to /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/network/admin/tnsnames.ora
tnsnames.ora 100% 536 0.5KB/s 00:00
sftp> quit

These steps could be combined either into a separate batch file (using the -b option then giving the file name) or redirected into sftp on the command line in the same fashion we have been using for SQL*Plus.

#!/bin/bash
#
cd $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
sftp sprog << EOF
cd /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/network/admin
put tnsnames.ora
exit
EOF

This short shell script will now automatically perform all the steps (except entering the password) that we accomplished interactively before. The main commands within sftp are listed in the table below.

Command	Action
quit bye	Close the connection and exit sftp (either command will work)
get	Retrieve a file from the remote system
put	Upload a file to the remote system
ls	List the contents of a directory on the local system. Many options which work with the ls command in the shell (like -l, -a and -t) also work with the ls command within sftp.
pwd	Show the current working directory on the remote system
cd	Change directory on the remote system
lpwd	Show the current working directory on the local system
lcd	Change directory on the local system
chmod	Change permissions of a given file
chown	Change ownership of a given file
chgrp	Change the group of a given file
rm	Remove a file from the remote system
rmdir	Remove a directory from the remote system
help	Display the online help for sftp

Many of these commands should be familiar and behave similarly to how they work in the shell. The ability to change permissions and ownership and to remove remote files and directories can be very useful in our shell scripts.

This is an excerpt from the book "Oracle Shell Scripting" by Rampant TechPress.

You can buy it directly from the publisher for only $34.95. Also, see the Oracle script collection for over 600 working Oracle scripts to download.

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