Introduction

Fanout allows you to run non-interactive commands on remote machines simultaneously, collecting the output in an organized fashion. The syntax is:

fanout "OneMachine SecondBox UserAccount@ThirdBox" "CommandToRun"

Examples

• fanout "wstearns@localhost localhost anotherhost.someplace.net" "echo My PID is \"\$PPID\" ; sleep 15"
• fanout "localhost" "uname -a ; rpm -qa | egrep -i '(openlinux|redhat-release)' ; uptime ; df -P / ; netstat -a | grep '*:*'" | less
• fanout "localhost myaccount@localhost" "uptime" >uptime-sample
• fanout --noping "localhost myaccount@localhost" "uptime" >uptime-sample

  If you set the SERVERS variable in your environment, you can run commands on these machines over and over:

  export SERVERS="web1 web2 mail"
  

• fanout "$SERVERS" "uname -a ; ( if [ -f /var/log/dmesg ]; then cat /var/log/dmesg ; else dmesg ; fi ) | egrep -i '(hd[a-h]|sd[a-h])' ; ls -al /proc/kcore ; cat /proc/cpuinfo" >serverspecs

Sample run

#Sample run
[wstearns@sparrow fanout]$ fanout "localhost wstearns@localhost aaa.bbb.ccc" "uptime" | less
aaa.bbb.ccc unavailable
Starting localhost
Starting wstearns@localhost
Fanout executing "uptime"
Start time Fri Apr 7 00:13:07 EDT 2000 , End time Fri Apr 7 00:13:20 EDT 2000
==== On aaa.bbb.ccc ====
==== Machine unreachable by ping

==== On localhost ====
   12:13am  up 3 days, 10:44,  0 users,  load average: 0.17, 0.17, 0.22

==== As wstearns on localhost ====
   12:13am  up 3 days, 10:44,  0 users,  load average: 0.15, 0.16, 0.22

Notes

• The accounts you connect to should have your ssh key ready and you should be running ssh-agent ready to serve that key. If you need help setting this up, please see ssh-keyinstall (main site).
• The command(s) you execute run concurrently on each remote machine. Output does not show up until all are done.

Download

For a complete list of all files, see filelist.html.

Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com>

Last edited: 8/7/2002

Best viewed with something that can show web pages... <grin>