# Knife ssh Return Values

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/knife-ssh-return-values/4017>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [May 26, 2013, 1:10pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/knife-ssh-return-values/4017 "2013-05-26T13:10:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mike\_Tewner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mike\_Tewner](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Mike_Tewner)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2013, 1:10pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/knife-ssh-return-values/4017/1 "2013-05-26T13:10:05Z")

</div>

Hi Guys!

We’re using “knife ssh” to deploy parts of our application. It seems,  
though, that knife ssh returns “0” if it can’t connect to the host:

user@chef02:/tmp$ knife ssh ‘name:MikeEnv01C1’ 'ls /etc’  
MikeEnv01C1 fstab makedev.d rmt  
.  
.  
.  
user@chef02:/tmp$ echo $?  
0

… and to a host which was brought down:

user@chef02:/tmp$ knife ssh ‘name:SteveEnv02C’ ‘ls /etc’

echo ? WARNING: Failed to connect to -- Errno::ETIMEDOUT: Connection timed out - connect(2) user@chef02:/tmp echo $?  
0

user@chef02:/tmp$ knife -v  
Chef: 11.4.0

Is this “As Designed”?

-Mike

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