dan sas wrote: > what about if i want to run both commands simultaneous and send the > output to a file how can i do that
This is getting further off topic for the bug bash mailing list. It really isn't too much about bash but just general help with how things work. A better place to ask these types of questions would be the help-gnu-ut...@gnu.org mailing list. If you have more questions in the future let's please have the discussion there. You could put the commands in the background. To put commands in the background use the '&' character at the end of the command line. If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell exe- cutes the command in the background in a subshell. The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0. Commands separated by a ; are executed sequentially; the shell waits for each command to terminate in turn. The return status is the exit status of the last command executed. And also redirect the output to a file. ssh -n server1 'tail -f /var/log/syslog | sed --unbuffered "s/^/$(hostname): /"' >>syslog.tail.out & ssh -n server2 'tail -f /var/log/syslog | sed --unbuffered "s/^/$(hostname): /"' >>syslog.tail.out & By this point it looks very much like you are trying to re-invent the remote logging feature of a syslogd. Because I now expect a new question about how to start and restart this connection automatically. (Am I right? :-) Instead please investigate using one of the syslog programs that does exactly that already. See for example 'rsyslogd' which supports remote logging. Good luck! Bob