Re: SFTP and the Pointy-Haired manager

[TilRMan]

I've never used Expect::Simple, but here it is in plain Expect:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use Expect;

my $REMOTE = 'name@server:/dir';
my $LOCAL  = 'file';

my $cmd = "sftp $REMOTE";
my $exp = Expect->spawn($cmd) or die;
$exp->expect(120, "password: ") or die;
$exp->send("dummy\r");
$exp->expect(120, "sftp> ") or die;
$exp->send("put $LOCAL\r");
$exp->expect(600, "sftp> ") or die;
$exp->send("bye\r");
$exp->close();

It behooves you to add reasonable messages to the die commands, since all Expect scripts inevitably break.

The code may need tweaking depending on software versions. For the record, here's what I used:

$ perl -v
This is perl, v5.6.1 built for i386-linux
$ perl -MExpect -le 'print $Expect::VERSION'
1.15
$ strings `which sftp` | grep sftp-client
@(#)$OpenBSD: sftp-client.c,v 1.33 2002/06/23 09:30:14 deraadt Exp $

[FatDog]

Cool. I will try to get expect installed tomorrow.

I did come up with a work around that solves the problem under Linux. It involves creating a command file for SFTP (with the PUT command), then creating a short Expect script that calls SFTP and responds with the password, then .. running the script.

I will post the code snippet tomorrow as I am home right now.

[FatDog]

Here is the cleaned-up routine I wrote that seems to work under Linux:


#---------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------------------------------------
# Routine:      DoSFTPCommands
# Description:  This routine will take an array of FTP commands and ex
+ecute them using SFTP.
# 
# Input:        
#               aCmdList - Array of FTP commands like: 
#                   "chdir /data/reports"
#                   "rm weekly_rpt_*.csv"
#                   "put /new/reports/weekly_rpt_2004_07_01.csv"
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------------------------------------
sub DoSFTPCommands {
    my (@aCmdList) = @_;

    # Put the FTP commands into a file so we can pass the file name to
+ the SFTP program

    open (CMD_FILE, ">ftp.cmd");
    foreach  (@aCmdList) {
        print CMD_FILE "$_\n";
    }
    close CMD_FILE;

    # Create a Expect script to run SFTP

    my $lCmd = '#!/usr/bin/expect
spawn  sftp  -b ftp.cmd [e-mail]
expect -exact " password: "
send "myPassword";
interact
';

    open (EXP_FILE, ">auto.exp");
    print EXP_FILE "$lCmd";
    close EXP_FILE;

    # Make the script runable

    system ("chmod +x auto.exp");
    
    # Run the script

    system ("./auto.exp");

    # Clean up by deleting the two files we created

    unlink ("ftp.cmd");
    unlink ("auto.exp");

}   # DoSFTPCommands