Running interactive commands in Paramiko

I’m trying to run an interactive command through paramiko. The cmd execution tries to prompt for a password but I do not know how to supply the password through paramiko’s exec_command and the execution hangs. Is there a way to send values to the terminal if a cmd execution expects input interactively?

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.connect(server, username=username, password=password)
ssh_stdin, ssh_stdout, ssh_stderr = ssh.exec_command("psql -U factory -d factory -f /tmp/data.sql")

Does anyone know how this can addressed? Thank you.

Answers:

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Method 1

The full paramiko distribution ships with a lot of good demos.

In the demos subdirectory, demo.py and interactive.py have full interactive TTY examples which would probably be overkill for your situation.

In your example above ssh_stdin acts like a standard Python file object, so ssh_stdin.write should work so long as the channel is still open.

I’ve never needed to write to stdin, but the docs suggest that a channel is closed as soon as a command exits, so using the standard stdin.write method to send a password up probably won’t work. There are lower level paramiko commands on the channel itself that give you more control – see how the SSHClient.exec_command method is implemented for all the gory details.

Method 2

I had the same problem trying to make an interactive ssh session using ssh, a fork of Paramiko.

I dug around and found this article:

Updated link (last version before the link generated a 404): http://web.archive.org/web/20170912043432/http://jessenoller.com/2009/02/05/ssh-programming-with-paramiko-completely-different/

To continue your example you could do

ssh_stdin, ssh_stdout, ssh_stderr = ssh.exec_command("psql -U factory -d factory -f /tmp/data.sql")
ssh_stdin.write('passwordn')
ssh_stdin.flush()
output = ssh_stdout.read()

The article goes more in depth, describing a fully interactive shell around exec_command. I found this a lot easier to use than the examples in the source.

Original link: http://jessenoller.com/2009/02/05/ssh-programming-with-paramiko-completely-different/

Method 3

You need Pexpect to get the best of both worlds (expect and ssh wrappers).

Method 4

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh.connect(server_IP,22,username, password)


stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command('/Users/lteue/Downloads/uecontrol-CXC_173_6456-R32A01/uecontrol.sh -host localhost ')
alldata = ""
while not stdout.channel.exit_status_ready():
   solo_line = ""        
   # Print stdout data when available
   if stdout.channel.recv_ready():
      # Retrieve the first 1024 bytes
      solo_line = stdout.channel.recv(1024) 
      alldata += solo_line
   if(cmp(solo_line,'uec> ') ==0 ):    #Change Conditionals to your code here  
     if num_of_input == 0 :
      data_buffer = ""    
      for cmd in commandList :
       #print cmd
       stdin.channel.send(cmd)        # send input commmand 1
      num_of_input += 1
     if num_of_input == 1 :
      stdin.channel.send('q n')      # send input commmand 2 , in my code is exit the interactive session, the connect will close.
      num_of_input += 1 
print alldata
ssh.close()

Why the stdout.read() will hang if use dierectly without checking stdout.channel.recv_ready(): in while stdout.channel.exit_status_ready():

For my case ,after run command on remote server , the session is waiting for user input , after input ‘q’ ,it will close the connection .
But before inputting ‘q’ , the stdout.read() will waiting for EOF,seems this methord does not works if buffer is larger .

• I tried stdout.read(1) in while , it works
  I tried stdout.readline() in while , it works also.
  stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command(‘/Users/lteue/Downloads/uecontrol’)
  stdout.read() will hang

Method 5

I’m not familiar with paramiko, but this may work:

ssh_stdin.write('input value')
ssh_stdin.flush()

For information on stdin:

http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html?highlight=stdin#sys.stdin

Method 6

Take a look at example and do in similar way

(sorce from http://jessenoller.com/2009/02/05/ssh-programming-with-paramiko-completely-different/):

    ssh.connect('127.0.0.1', username='jesse', 
        password='lol')
    stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command(
        "sudo dmesg")
    stdin.write('loln')
    stdin.flush()
    data = stdout.read.splitlines()
    for line in data:
        if line.split(':')[0] == 'AirPort':
            print line

Method 7

You can use this method to send whatever confirmation message you want like “OK” or the password. This is my solution with an example:

def SpecialConfirmation(command, message, reply):
    net_connect.config_mode()    # To enter config mode
    net_connect.remote_conn.sendall(str(command)+'n' )
    time.sleep(3)
    output = net_connect.remote_conn.recv(65535).decode('utf-8')
    ReplyAppend=''
    if str(message) in output:
        for i in range(0,(len(reply))):
            ReplyAppend+=str(reply[i])+'n'
        net_connect.remote_conn.sendall(ReplyAppend)
        output = net_connect.remote_conn.recv(65535).decode('utf-8') 
    print (output)
    return output

CryptoPkiEnroll=['','','no','no','yes']

output=SpecialConfirmation ('crypto pki enroll TCA','Password' , CryptoPkiEnroll )
print (output)

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0