How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?

[Chris Stromberger]

On 25 Jul 2001 14:13:20 -0500, claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron
Laird) wrote:

>In article <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>,
>Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>On 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
>>wrote:
>>>On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>>>>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>>>>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>>>>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>>>>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>>>>Any pointers much appreciated.
>>>
>>>This is a shell task:
>>>
>>>(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
>>> ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results
>>>
>>>Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
>>>passwords all the time.
>>
>>BTW, if you *really* wanted to use python for it, you couldn't use popen
>>(stdio wins again!).  You'd need to use ptys to trick telnet that it's being
>>run by a terminal.  That means either figuring out how unix ptys work and
>>using pty.py, or installing expect and ExpectPy.  Both are more work than
>>installing openssh (and once you do that you can toss telnet anyway).
>>
>>Unless, of course, machine{1,2} don't have ssh and you have no control over
>>them.  There are any number of ugly hacks you could do at that point, and
>>expect is one of them.
>>
>>or-publish-the-logs-on-the-web-and-use-wget-ly y'rs
>
>Exactly.  That is, ssh is a fine way to solve these
>problems--unless you don't have control over the re-
>mote end.
>
>Long term, ExpectPy might be in better shape than
>you realize.  There are glimmers of hope that Expect
>might be rewritten in a way that eases maintenance
>of ExpectPy (and maybe brings Win* within range, too).
>In the meantime, you might consider using stock Expect.
>You might be able to get your job done with just a few
>lines.  If you need more, there are plenty of ways to
>tie together Tcl and Python codings.


Unfortunately, I have no control over either end!  Not even over the
Python installation. It's 1.5.6 (or whatever was just before 2.0).
Was hoping there was some magically easy way to do this, like there
usually is with Python.

Thanks for the suggestions.