On Thu, Nov 01, 2018 at 02:08:15PM +0000, John Cohen wrote:
No, for two reasons:-
You'd have to enter a password on the server to copy a file to the client - not possible in an automatically run script. The client can't be 'seen' by the server (when connecting from 'out there on the internet' anyway) so there's nowhere (DNS'wise) to send the file to.Ah, ok. I was thinking with ssh keys installed to connect to the other machine (laptop in your case?). I run duplicity to a remote machine that changes IP, but is always accessible- using ddclient in my case but could be anything. The server machine runs the script, scp's the files across and closes the connection without the need of password authentication.
This would work when the laptop is connecting only across my home LAN (which is one of the cases I want to handle). I do have *some* passwordless keys and the laptop doesn't need to be that secure, on purpose.
However when the laptop connects from 'out on the internet' there isn't a name (or IP) to connect back to, the IP which the ssh environment variables will show is just that of an intermediate system or the WAN address of the router via which the laptop is connecting. Since it usually won't be 'my' router I can't set up address translation or anything.