| Examples |
| ======== |
| |
| Under the distribution tarball directory you should find an "examples" directory. |
| This is the best way to learn to use Pexpect. See the descriptions of Pexpect |
| Examples. |
| |
| `topip.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/topip.py>`_ |
| This runs `netstat` on a local or remote server. It calculates some simple |
| statistical information on the number of external inet connections. This can |
| be used to detect if one IP address is taking up an excessive number of |
| connections. It can also send an email alert if a given IP address exceeds a |
| threshold between runs of the script. This script can be used as a drop-in |
| Munin plugin or it can be used stand-alone from cron. I used this on a busy |
| web server that would sometimes get hit with denial of service attacks. This |
| made it easy to see if a script was opening many multiple connections. A |
| typical browser would open fewer than 10 connections at once. A script might |
| open over 100 simultaneous connections. |
| |
| `hive.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/hive.py>`_ |
| This script creates SSH connections to a list of hosts that you provide. |
| Then you are given a command line prompt. Each shell command that you |
| enter is sent to all the hosts. The response from each host is collected |
| and printed. For example, you could connect to a dozen different |
| machines and reboot them all at once. |
| |
| `script.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/script.py>`_ |
| This implements a command similar to the classic BSD "script" command. |
| This will start a subshell and log all input and output to a file. |
| This demonstrates the :meth:`~pexpect.spawn.interact` method of Pexpect. |
| |
| `ftp.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/ftp.py>`_ |
| This demonstrates an FTP "bookmark". This connects to an ftp site; |
| does a few ftp tasks; and then gives the user interactive control over |
| the session. In this case the "bookmark" is to a directory on the |
| OpenBSD ftp server. It puts you in the i386 packages directory. You |
| can easily modify this for other sites. This demonstrates the |
| :meth:`~pexpect.spawn.interact` method of Pexpect. |
| |
| `monitor.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/monitor.py>`_ |
| This runs a sequence of commands on a remote host using SSH. It runs a |
| simple system checks such as uptime and free to monitor the state of |
| the remote host. |
| |
| `passmass.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/passmass.py>`_ |
| This will login to each given server and change the password of the |
| given user. This demonstrates scripting logins and passwords. |
| |
| `python.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/python.py>`_ |
| This starts the python interpreter and prints the greeting message |
| backwards. It then gives the user iteractive control of Python. It's |
| pretty useless! |
| |
| `ssh_tunnel.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/ssh_tunnel.py>`_ |
| This starts an SSH tunnel to a remote machine. It monitors the |
| connection and restarts the tunnel if it goes down. |
| |
| `uptime.py <https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect/blob/master/examples/uptime.py>`_ |
| This will run the uptime command and parse the output into variables. |
| This demonstrates using a single regular expression to match the |
| output of a command and capturing different variable in match groups. |
| The grouping regular expression handles a wide variety of different |
| uptime formats. |