Command syntax of ssh

[Jose Marcio Medeiros]

Hi,
I was submitted to an IT exam that have a question about SSH. The answer options are True or False.

Question:
Secure copy of files can be executed remotely with the command
ssh -l user host `cd dir; tar cvf - ./*` |tar xvf -

Is it true?
I know that there is the command scp, but using ssh, is it correct?

Thanx.

[Ralph Grothe · Accepted solution]

Provided you want to extract the remote directory tree into the current working directory from where you submitted the ssh command, and provided the remote user has a directory dir in his $HOME this will work fine.

I constantly use similar constructs to move data between hosts.

[Michael Armbrecht]

I am not too sure about that '*' wildcard in the ssh command, it might be that it will be expanded by your local shell and not the remote one. You might have to escape it.

[Ralph Grothe]

Michael,

the command string to be executed by the remote shell is already in single quotes.

However, mentioning this issue is a good point.

One has to be careful to quote any shell meta-characters (either by prepending backslashes or by putting them in single quotes) that are intended to be interpreted/epxpanded by the remote shell.
If not these will be expanded by the local shell.
Considering this behavior you can build up complex pipelines.