I have various shell scripts that do something like the following: if ssh -a -x remote-machine remote-command > local-file then ssh -a -x remote-machine another-command local-command else ssh -a -x remote-machine third-command another-local-command fi
and more complicated variations. The commands in question are very fast, but the script is slow because ssh needs to authenticate each time. (I run ssh-agent and have entered an identity into the agent before running the script, so no passwords need to be typed.) What I am looking for is a way to just authenticate once, and then have the ability to run remote commands getting the error code and the output on the local machine. Is there an easy way to do this? The sort of thing I imagine is running ssh once to forward a local port to the remote machine, and then somehow sending commands along the channel and getting the error code and output also on that channel. But this seems a bit tricky to set up. Thanks for any ideas. Dan -- Dan Christensen [EMAIL PROTECTED]