Create new processes over telnet in XP

[Rob Wolfe]

Godzilla wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How do you create/spawn new processes in XP over telnet using python?
> I.e. I would like to create a new process and have it running in the
> background... when I terminate the telnet connection, I would what the
> spawned processes to keep running until I shut it off...
>
> I got the os.popen method to spawn a new process running in the
> backgroun, but not over telnet... tried os.popen[2, 3, 4] and also
> subprocesses.popen without any luck...

I don't know what kind of OS there is on that remote host you telnet
to.
The idea boils down to appropriate using of methods
`read_until` and `write` from class `telnetlib.Telnet`.

For more complicated stuff you can consider using pyexpect.

Here is a small example of connecting to HP-UX.
You can adjust that to your needs.

<code>
import telnetlib, time

def login(tn, login, passwd, prompt):
    tn.read_until("login: ")
    tn.write(login + "\n")
    if passwd:
        tn.read_until("Password: ")
        tn.write(passwd + "\n")
    tn.read_until(prompt)
    time.sleep(2)
    print "logged in"

def run_proc(tn, progname):
    tn.write("nohup %s &\n" % progname)
    tn.write("exit\n")
    print "program <%s> running" % progname

def kill_proc(tn, login, prompt, progname):
    tn.write("ps -u %s\n" % login)
    buf = tn.read_until(prompt)
    pid = get_pid(buf, progname)
    if not pid:
        print "program <%s> not killed" % progname
        tn.write("exit\n")
        return
    tn.write("kill -TERM %s\n" % pid)
    tn.write("exit\n")
    print "program <%s> killed" % progname

def get_pid(buf, progname):
    pid, comm = None, None
    for line in buf.split("\n"):
        try:
            pid, _, _, comm = line.split()
        except ValueError:
            continue
        if comm == progname:
            return pid

tn = telnetlib.Telnet(HOST, PORT)
#tn.set_debuglevel(1)
login(tn, "login", "passwd", "/home/user")
run_proc(tn, "python ~/test.py")
#kill_proc(tn, "login", "/home/user", "python")
</code>

--
HTH,
Rob