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
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