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VBS script to use putty/plink to login to Unix - run command - retrieve answer into variable

Greetings,

I need to create a VBS script do the following - all in the background and not verbos:

1. Call putty/plink and ssh to a Unix (or Linux) server with user ID and password.
2. Run a specific command to find out if the system is primary or backup (for failover)
3. Feed the answer into a variable and then rename a file to something else if the variable equals one server or the other.

I am familiar enough with VB at this point to know what to do after I get the value in the variable but I have no idea how to log in to a Unix/Linux server via ssh from a windows system, run a unix command, get retrieve the command result and bring it back.

Any help would be great. I am not opposed to using something other than VB - it's just that I'm more familiar with that than anything else.

Thanks!

SOLUTION

Gerwin Jansen

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yccdadmins

ASKER

What you have shown me looks like exactly what I was missing. Once I get the variable I can integrate it with my existing case statements that already edit shortcuts on a server based on AD group membership. I'm going to try this tomorrow.

Basically, all end users using an RDS server have the wrong link if we have a failover. We've tried providing them with links to both systems but they always seemed to log in to the wrong server no matter what we do. Next best thing is this - automate the process and update their link in the background.

Will let you know how it goes.

yccdadmins

ASKER

Ok - tried it and got an error on line 3 - character 5. Error was:

Error: Expected identifier
Code: 800A03F2

I'm looking up that code to see what I find.....

yccdadmins

ASKER

Also - looking at plink to figure out how to force it to use ssh...

yccdadmins

ASKER

Trying to easily decipher the instruction for Plink auto login is absolutely ridiculous. Why to people assume you have hours to read through something, bouncing from one section to another. I'm able to login via ssh using plink from command line but not able to decipher how to get it to work from a script...so far.

Gerwin Jansen

plink is using ssh - you can verify by adding -P 22 (ssh port) like this:

'c:\path_to\plink username@your_hostname -pw password -P 22 command_to_run'

But about your error message: the script I've posted above is a cmd script (dos window), no vbs. Do you call other executables from vbs? To call plink from vbs you'd have to do a WshShell.Exec I believe.

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Gerwin Jansen

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yccdadmins

ASKER

Using plink command line I was able to:

1. login to the Unix server - passing a username and password.
2. run the pwd command
3. write the results to an output file.

So far so good. Now I just need to figure out how to:

1. get a script to ssh to the system but without exposing the password.
2. run the pwd command.
3. have the script put the results in a variable.

Closer at least.

Gerwin Jansen

Without exposing the password: ssh keys can do that for you. You need help on that?

The output you want is in the pline variable above, that is what I verified working.

yccdadmins

ASKER

Yep - need help on that. Basically, once I get the results from the command loaded into the variable I'm good from there. I need help with everything leading up to it since I've never worked with putty/plink like this before. I've gone through their docs but they bounce around too much.

Before I get into going without a password I wanted to get this working. Line 2, character 4 seems to have generated and error: "The system cannot find the file specified."

Something is off with the line "Set exec = shell.Exec(pcmd)" . I'm running it from Windows 2008 server but that shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Investigating....

Gerwin Jansen

Ssh keys sample will follow (mobile). That line 2 should contain the real path to your plink.exe - server 2008 is fine.

SOLUTION

Gerwin Jansen

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yccdadmins

ASKER

Hello,

I had found the following link and used it to set up Putty for auto-login - worked perfectly and that hurdle is passed.

http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/20/ssh-without-password-using-putty/#.VBtD4k10y9K

I'm testing the script portion now....

yccdadmins

ASKER

The script ran perfectly! No errors and the results from the command I ran popped right up. So to confirm - pline is the variable that contains the results of what I run on the Unix side?

Gerwin Jansen

Nice link about automating the login, I just wrote from the top of my head ;)

And yes, pline is the variable that will contain the output:

While Not pout.AtEndOfStream
pline = pout.ReadLine
WScript.echo pline
Wend

( so if you get more than one 'line' back from Unix, you get multiple popups ;) )

yccdadmins

ASKER

This is great. Below is my code to delete a link and then copy a new one based on the results. I used basic commands like pwd for testing because the test account can't run the actual command at this time. Everything works great except now I need to know how to make it run in the background with no user interaction like the popup....

On Error Resume Next

'-----------------------------------------------------
'Set variables for group determination etc.
'-----------------------------------------------------

Set WSHShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
Set WSHProcess = WSHShell.Environment("Process")
'Set objShell = CreateObject(wscript.shell)

Const DeleteReadOnly = TRUE

Set shell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

 	pcmd = "C:\Windows\System32\plink username@hostname -i C:\PuttyFiles\SSH-Keys\Tterm2PrivateKey.ppk pwd;exit"
 	Set exec = shell.Exec(pcmd)
	Set pout = exec.StdOut

 	While Not pout.AtEndOfStream
     		pline = pout.ReadLine
     		WScript.echo pline
 	Wend 

	Select Case pline

        Case "/home/username"


		Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
		set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
		tDesktopPath = WshShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")
		objFSO.DeleteFile tDesktopPath & "\* Client.lnk"
		objFSO.CopyFile "C:\scripts\testshortcut\Prod1 Client.*", tDesktopPath, True 'OverwriteExisting

        Case "hostname"


		Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
		set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
		tDesktopPath = WshShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")
		objFSO.DeleteFile DesktopPath & "\* Client.lnk"
		objFSO.CopyFile "C:\scripts\testshortcut\Prod1 Client.*", tDesktopPath, True 'OverwriteExisting

    End Select

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Gerwin Jansen

Remove the line:

WScript.echo pline

yccdadmins

ASKER

Thanks - I had commented that out a bit ago and the only thing that pops up briefly now is the cmd screen but I put ";exit" after m command so it doesn't stay.

I had some errors in my case as far as deleting the exiting file but once I corrected that it works great.

Thanks for your assistance!