Automation of command(s) to NI/NX controllers via telnet/SSH

marting

Hi all,

Been trying to figure out a way to automatically send one or more (ideally more) commands to a controller via telnet/SSH. Putty and its brother plink are both supposed to support this. However, when I try the commands that are supposed to work:

putty [controller] -ssh -l administrator -pw [password] -m asdf.txt (where asdf.txt has one or more commands)
plink [controller] -ssh -l administrator -pw [password] [AMX_telnet_command]

...I get no love:

FATAL ERROR: Server refused to start a shell/command


Any ideas on what can be done to make this work? Also open to other solutions that would let me do this.

travis

Haven't tried this yet, but it works well for other stuff...

https://github.com/ansible/ansible

Let us know when you get the profiles all written!

marting

travis wrote: »

Haven't tried this yet, but it works well for other stuff...

https://github.com/ansible/ansible

That seems awfully heavy for what I'm trying to do. Especially since we're Windows-based and the Ansible control system has to be Linux.


I had limited success with the following:

ECHO [AMX_telnet_command] | plink [controller] -ssh -l administrator -pw [password]

This works for sending a single command to an NI (i.e. reboot). Unfortunately, on the NXes, it doesn't even work for that... Still playing around with and open to other options if anyone has suggestions!

ericmedley

Perhaps another approach would be to write your own telnet port from within the Netlinx program. That way you can easily manage the API

cmatkin

Hi Marting, give Indigo Terminal Emulator from http://www.shadeblue.com a go. This has commands, macros and events.

mstocum

If you're handy with the command line from a Unix system, look at the "expect" command.

marting

KiTTY!

I was able to do what I need using KiTTY which is based on a fork of putty (www.9bis.net/kitty/).

Examples

Rebooting a controller:
kitty [hostname] -ssh -l [username] -pw [password] -cmd reboot

Wiping the URL list on a controller (up to 10 entries):
kitty [hostname] -ssh -l [username] -pw [password] -cmd "set url\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\nD\n"

a_riot42

I was doing something similar a while ago telnetting into touch panels, and sending a command, parsing its output, and then displaying it on the panel. I used this to get the time until the battery died, which was only available using the batt command at the touch panel shell. This was from code though, not from a laptop. My suggestion would be to FTP the text file of commands to the master, then start a telnet session in code to the master, and run each command, parsing output if needed. I haven't tried it on a master, but for the panels it worked, so I don't see why it wouldn't on a master. That is only one way, I'm sure there are many others.
Paul