expectperl-discuss

[Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[schlum <jsc...@bo...>]

Hi,

I spent few days on this one, but couldn't get it working...

I am working under sunOS
bt1wxxxx#uname -a
SunOS bt1wxxxx 5.6 Generic_105181-23 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60

I can run the following script without any problem :

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Expect;
my $exp = Expect->new;
$exp->raw_pty(1);
my $test = $exp->spawn('/usr/local/bin/ssh', -l => 'my_user', 'my_host') or
die "Cannot spawn command: $!\n";
my @test1 = $exp->expect(5,'-re','password:');
$exp->clear_accum();
my @test2 = $exp->send("my_pass\r\n");
my @test3 = $exp->expect(15,'-re','my_host');
my @test4 = $exp->send("sh privilege\r\n");

The last command is exectuted successfuly.

But if I try this : 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Expect;
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use Thread::Queue::Any;

my $thread = threads->new(\&threadJob,); 
$thread->join;

sub threadJob{
    my $exp = Expect->new;
    $exp->raw_pty(1);
    my $test = $exp->spawn('/usr/local/bin/ssh', -l => 'my_user', 'my_host')
or die "Cannot spawn command: $!\n";
    my @test1 = $exp->expect(5,'-re','password:');
    $exp->clear_accum();
    my @test2 = $exp->send("my_pass\r\n");
    my @test3 = $exp->expect(15,'-re','my_host');
    my @test4 = $exp->send("sh privilege\r\n");# On envoie le mdp   
	}

I actually get connected, but Expect don't interact anymore with ssh after
the logging. Instead, I can access the box, I telneted from STDIN ...

Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?

Btw, when I close the conection, the script finishes to run peacefully.

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Re: [Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[Matt Z. <mzagrabe@d.umn.edu>]

[...]

> Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?

Check the archives.

=46rom [1] comes:

>>
While Expect is supposed to be reasonably threadsafe, IO-Tty is *not*,
that's where the problems come from. If you want to automate telnet,
using Net::Telnet with Expect should be possible under threads.
<<

I have had issues getting expect to use a spawned Net::Telnet object as
well (which is "supposed to be" thread safe). After much gnashing of
teeth, i have given up on Expect and been using Net::Telnet alone; which
is disappointing, because Expect is much more powerful and elegant than
Net::Telnet, however many *many* hours were wasted trying to get them to
work together across a diverse population of Cisco gear.

[1]

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=3D3DE0EEDC.7060703%
40cpan.org

--=20
Matt Zagrabelny - mzagrabe@d.umn.edu - (218) 726 8844
University of Minnesota Duluth
Information Technology Systems & Services
PGP key 1024D/84E22DA2 2005-11-07
Fingerprint: 78F9 18B3 EF58 56F5 FC85  C5CA 53E7 887F 84E2 2DA2

He is not a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot
lose.
-Jim Elliot

Re: [Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[Austin S. <te...@of...>]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 10:50:32AM -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> [...]
> 
> > Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?
> 
> Check the archives.
> 
> From [1] comes:
> 
> >>
> While Expect is supposed to be reasonably threadsafe, IO-Tty is *not*,
> that's where the problems come from. If you want to automate telnet,
> using Net::Telnet with Expect should be possible under threads.
> <<
> 
> I have had issues getting expect to use a spawned Net::Telnet object as
> well (which is "supposed to be" thread safe). After much gnashing of
> teeth, i have given up on Expect and been using Net::Telnet alone; which
> is disappointing, because Expect is much more powerful and elegant than
> Net::Telnet, however many *many* hours were wasted trying to get them to
> work together across a diverse population of Cisco gear.
> 

	Have you tried using exp_init on a Net::Telnet object? That doesn't
use IO::Tty.

	Austin

Re: [Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[Matt Z. <mzagrabe@d.umn.edu>]

On Wed, 2007-07-11 at 11:56 -0700, Austin Schutz wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 10:50:32AM -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> > [...]
> >=20
> > > Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?
> >=20
> > Check the archives.
> >=20
> > From [1] comes:
> >=20
> > >>
> > While Expect is supposed to be reasonably threadsafe, IO-Tty is *not*,
> > that's where the problems come from. If you want to automate telnet,
> > using Net::Telnet with Expect should be possible under threads.
> > <<
> >=20
> > I have had issues getting expect to use a spawned Net::Telnet object as
> > well (which is "supposed to be" thread safe). After much gnashing of
> > teeth, i have given up on Expect and been using Net::Telnet alone; whic=
h
> > is disappointing, because Expect is much more powerful and elegant than
> > Net::Telnet, however many *many* hours were wasted trying to get them t=
o
> > work together across a diverse population of Cisco gear.
> >=20
>=20
> 	Have you tried using exp_init on a Net::Telnet object? That doesn't
> use IO::Tty.

Yes, and by in large it worked. However, there were some Cisco switches
that it did not work for. So... I emailed the list and a fellow gave me
some good advice and my problems were solved, so I thought. There were
still some anomalies that were not working correctly. So to recap:

* Expect worked with everything, but no threads

* Expect with Net::Telnet was threaded, but could not communicate to all
switches

* Expect with Net::Telnet plus trick from mailing list was able to
communicate to almost all switches, but not all

Hence...

I now use Net::Telnet by itself. It is not as elegant as Expect, but the
thread speedup is *awesome*.

--=20
Matt Zagrabelny - mzagrabe@d.umn.edu - (218) 726 8844
University of Minnesota Duluth
Information Technology Systems & Services
PGP key 1024D/84E22DA2 2005-11-07
Fingerprint: 78F9 18B3 EF58 56F5 FC85  C5CA 53E7 887F 84E2 2DA2

He is not a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot
lose.
-Jim Elliot

Re: [Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[schlum <jsc...@bo...>]

Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2007-07-11 at 11:56 -0700, Austin Schutz wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 10:50:32AM -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
>> > [...]
>> > 
>> > > Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?
>> > 
>> > Check the archives.
>> > 
>> > From [1] comes:
>> > 
>> > >>
>> > While Expect is supposed to be reasonably threadsafe, IO-Tty is *not*,
>> > that's where the problems come from. If you want to automate telnet,
>> > using Net::Telnet with Expect should be possible under threads.
>> > <<
>> > 
>> > I have had issues getting expect to use a spawned Net::Telnet object as
>> > well (which is "supposed to be" thread safe). After much gnashing of
>> > teeth, i have given up on Expect and been using Net::Telnet alone;
>> which
>> > is disappointing, because Expect is much more powerful and elegant than
>> > Net::Telnet, however many *many* hours were wasted trying to get them
>> to
>> > work together across a diverse population of Cisco gear.
>> > 
>> 
>> 	Have you tried using exp_init on a Net::Telnet object? That doesn't
>> use IO::Tty.
> 
> Yes, and by in large it worked. However, there were some Cisco switches
> that it did not work for. So... I emailed the list and a fellow gave me
> some good advice and my problems were solved, so I thought. There were
> still some anomalies that were not working correctly. So to recap:
> 
> * Expect worked with everything, but no threads
> 
> * Expect with Net::Telnet was threaded, but could not communicate to all
> switches
> 
> * Expect with Net::Telnet plus trick from mailing list was able to
> communicate to almost all switches, but not all
> 
> Hence...
> 
> I now use Net::Telnet by itself. It is not as elegant as Expect, but the
> thread speedup is *awesome*.
> 
> -- 
> Matt Zagrabelny - mzagrabe@d.umn.edu - (218) 726 8844
> University of Minnesota Duluth
> Information Technology Systems & Services
> PGP key 1024D/84E22DA2 2005-11-07
> Fingerprint: 78F9 18B3 EF58 56F5 FC85  C5CA 53E7 887F 84E2 2DA2
> 
> He is not a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot
> lose.
> -Jim Elliot
> 
> 

Hi !
Thank you for your answers.
Actually my need seems to be the same as you : I want to automatize some
operations on routers/switch/... I have about 2500 boxes to manage => I need
the multithreading in most cases.

For me everything worked fine with expect/telnet/threaded, as for
SNMP/threaded. But we are now desactivating the Telnet on the
infrastructure, so I really need to find a remplacement to Telnet. Most
Cisco equipments only support SSH V1, so the only way I found so far is to
use Expect.

You think there is no hope of getting Expect/SSH/threaded working ? What
struck me (and let me some hope) is that the trouble appear with only one
thread running... So far it's not a thread compatibily bug, no ?

I haven't try yet to use exp_init, but I am not sure what FILEHANDLE I am
suppose to feed it with. Is there a way to get a filehandle from a ssh
conection in Perl ?

Thank  you very much for your help.
Jerome
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Re: [Expectperl-discuss] Trouble with Expect working with Threads

[Roland G. <rgi...@cp...>]

>From the perlthrtut:
"Thinking of mixing fork() and threads?  Please lie down and wait
until the feeling passes."
;-)

Note that spawn() does a fork. So this can only work if you spawn()
all SSH connections in the main thread and then pass the Expect
objects to the threads for handling. Bryan Bueter has provided a
working example for using Expect/SSH/threads on the mailing list.

Hope this helps,

Roland
PS: Net::SSH2 looks promising because it's objects are tied
filehandles and thus should work with Expect via exp_init(). But I
haven't had the time to try that yet. Hopefully any day soon...

On 7/11/07, schlum <jsc...@bo...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I spent few days on this one, but couldn't get it working...
>
> I am working under sunOS
> bt1wxxxx#uname -a
> SunOS bt1wxxxx 5.6 Generic_105181-23 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60
>
> I can run the following script without any problem :
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> use strict;
> use Expect;
> my $exp = Expect->new;
> $exp->raw_pty(1);
> my $test = $exp->spawn('/usr/local/bin/ssh', -l => 'my_user', 'my_host') or
> die "Cannot spawn command: $!\n";
> my @test1 = $exp->expect(5,'-re','password:');
> $exp->clear_accum();
> my @test2 = $exp->send("my_pass\r\n");
> my @test3 = $exp->expect(15,'-re','my_host');
> my @test4 = $exp->send("sh privilege\r\n");
>
> The last command is exectuted successfuly.
>
> But if I try this :
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> use strict;
> use Expect;
> use threads;
> use threads::shared;
> use Thread::Queue::Any;
>
> my $thread = threads->new(\&threadJob,);
> $thread->join;
>
> sub threadJob{
>     my $exp = Expect->new;
>     $exp->raw_pty(1);
>     my $test = $exp->spawn('/usr/local/bin/ssh', -l => 'my_user', 'my_host')
> or die "Cannot spawn command: $!\n";
>     my @test1 = $exp->expect(5,'-re','password:');
>     $exp->clear_accum();
>     my @test2 = $exp->send("my_pass\r\n");
>     my @test3 = $exp->expect(15,'-re','my_host');
>     my @test4 = $exp->send("sh privilege\r\n");# On envoie le mdp
>         }
>
> I actually get connected, but Expect don't interact anymore with ssh after
> the logging. Instead, I can access the box, I telneted from STDIN ...
>
> Does anybody knows why I'm getting this strange behavior ?
>
> Btw, when I close the conection, the script finishes to run peacefully.
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Trouble-with-Expect-working-with-Threads-tf4062209.html#a11541250
> Sent from the Perl - Expectperl-Discuss mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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