Question

I’m trying to write a shell script (Bash) to log into a SonicWall firewall device and issue a command to perform automated backups of the devices ruleset. I prefer to do this in Bash but I will accept a python, perl, except, or applescript solution. If it cannot be done in bash please mention that.

Problems:

1.) SSH server on firewall is custom, a user name and password has to be specified after issuing a

$ ssh server.com

so no matter what username you issue e.g.

$ ssh [e-mail]

the SSH server still presents a username and password box after

2.) The SSH server is minimal and I cannot use public-keys

I tried using a here-document but it isn’t working and it results in an immediate “connection closed by remote host”.

The command I need to execute takes the form of this:

export preferences ftp "ftp.server.com" "user1" "mypassword" "output.exp"

Connecting gives me this:

$ ssh [e-mail]


Copyright (c) 2010 SonicWALL, Inc. 

User:    

After a username is issued it brings up the password prompt:

User:user1
Password:

I tried a here-document to no avail.

$ ssh server <<+
user1
mypassword
export preferences ftp "ftp.server.com" "user1" "mypassword" "output.exp"
exit
+ 
Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
Connection to 10.1.1.1 closed by remote host.

I tried using echo to pipe in commands too but that doesn’t work either.

Typing the commands in manually works just fine.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

As others have suggested, expect is probably what you want to use here.

Here’s a short example of how to work with it from bash to get you started:

login=root
IP=127.0.01
password=helloworld
# +whatever variables you need to use

# Run the expect script from bash
expect_sh=$(expect -c "
spawn ssh $login@$IP
expect \"password:\"
send \"$password\r\"
expect \"#\"
send \"cd $dest_dir\r\"
expect \"#\"
send \"chmod +x $server_side_script $other_script\r\"
expect \"#\"
send \"./$device_side_script\r\"
expect \"#\"
send \"cat results_file\r\" 
expect \"#\"
send \"exit\r\"
")

# Output or do something with the results
echo "$expect_sh"