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Robots for applications?

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  • EricWebb
    Junior Member
    • Jan 2006
    • 11

    #1

    Robots for applications?

    Is anyone using any sort of robot that runs a command-line program or opens a telnet session, simulates user input, and reads screen responses to determine if an application is running? I've seen (and understand) techniques using wget for web-driven apps, but this one is a command-line app that users telnet into.
  • Markus
    Member
    • Jan 2006
    • 39

    #2
    You could run a script* that telnets into a site every few minutes and stores the outcome (success/failure) somewhere. Another Zabbix controlled script could then pick up this data asynchronously.

    In fact I am currently working (draft stage) on such a mechanism for various protocols.

    Markus

    * in Expect or Python/telnetlib or maybe Perl

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    • elkor
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2005
      • 299

      #3
      yeah I was going to suggest trying Expect.

      it's relatively quick and simple to deal with, especially if you don't have a particuarly complicated application. And, it can be nested in shell scripts pretty easily.

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      • stritec
        Junior Member
        • Mar 2005
        • 13

        #4
        Use Expect

        I would use expect.

        We have a DSL Connection to the outside world, and we have zabbix monitor that we can get to www.yahoo.com. If the ping cannot get out, then we assume there's a problem with our DSL Connection.

        I have a very simple Expect script which logs into the router via telnet, then issues the system command, and selects restart, and the router restarts.

        Very simple, and easy because of expect.

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        • desertrate77
          Junior Member
          • Mar 2006
          • 4

          #5
          Still a good idea...every thought about Pexpect?

          Still sounds like a very useful idea. Has anyone tried it so far? One idea might be to combine the python idea and the Expect idea, with something like Pexpect (http://pexpect.sourceforge.net/). Power of python, flexibility of Expect.

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