RE: [Expectperl-discuss] Expect and passwd

[Walls R. W C. 75 CS/S. <Rob...@HI...>]

I removed the explicitly added \n from the password ->send string.  Now
debug reports Sending '1derful^J' to spawn id(3) instead of the
'1derful\n\012' it was sending. However, the intermittent hang still occurs.
When things hang, Expect receives the password instead of 'New password'.
That is:
Waiting for new data ...
1derful

instead of:

Waiting for new data ...
New password:
(and THEN receiving the password from ->send)
It's like the answer arrives before the question is asked...

I tried chomping the input passwords, but that did no good.
I am using Term::ReadKey to input the password. Could there be some buffer
issues with just loading that module?
I hard coded the password string "1derful\n" and did not use ReadKey at all
and things seem to work consistently. 
I could get the password as an arg, but that puts the password on the
screen.
I could also use getc instead of ReadKey, but I don't know how to turn off
echo. I tried 
  system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/nul";
but that still echo'd.

Anyway, I am just trying to change system and Samba passwords at the same
time and do some other updates to files when I or my users change their
passwords.
Do you have any ideas on a better way to do this? I am sure it has been done
before, and I'm not too proud to use someone else's code!
Expect seems like the natural thing to use to glue things together, so maybe
you've seen something like this (many times?)
Thanks for the help.

-----Original Message-----
From: Roland Giersig [mailto:RGi...@cp...]
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 1:48 AM
To: Walls Rob W Contr 75 CS/SCBS
Cc: 'exp...@li...'
Subject: RE: [Expectperl-discuss] Expect and passwd


> Sometimes it fails 1st then starts working and other times it works
> and them fails, if that makes any difference (or sense...)
...
> Sending '1derful\n\012' to spawn id(3)

OK, that was a subtle one: you are not chomping the entered password, 
so when you send it, it contains TWO \n.  passwd clears it's readline 
buffer before reading the password, but depending things beyond 
control, the second \n might or might not be in the buffer to be 
cleared.  If it's not cleared, the "Repeat password" prompt returns 
with an empty password, which clearly does not match the first one...

Just remove the "\n" from the send and it should work reliably.

Hope this helps,

Roland
-- 
RGi...@cp...