Question

I’m using a simple pexpect script to ssh to a remote machine and grab a value returned by a command.
Is there any way, pexpect or sshwise I can use to ignore the unix greeting?
That is, from

    child = pexpect.spawn('/usr/bin/ssh %s@%s' % (rem_user, host))
    child.expect('[pP]assword: ', timeout=5)
    child.sendline(spass)
    child.expect([pexpect.TIMEOUT, prompt])
    child.before = '0'
    child.sendline ('%s' % cmd2exec)
    child.expect([pexpect.EOF, prompt])

    # Collected data processing
    result = child.before
    # logon to the machine returns a lot of garbage, the returned executed command is at the 57th position
    print result.split('\r\n') [57]
    result = result.split('\r\n') [57]

How can I simply get the returned value, ignoring,
the “Last successful login” and “(c)Copyright” stuff
and without having to concern with the value correct position?

Thanks !

Answer 1

If you have access to the server to which you are logging in, you can try creating a file named .hushlogin in the home directory. The presence of this file silences the standard MOTD greeting and similar stuff.

Alternatively, try ssh -T, which will disable terminal allocation entirely; you won’t get a shell prompt, but you may still issue commands and read the response.

There is also a similar thread on ServerFault which may be of some use to you.